Coudenhove Kalergi - An Idea Conquers The World ( 1954)

AN IDEA
CONQUERS
THE WORLD

^ith a 'Pr^ace bj

The Rt. Hon. Sir

WINSTON S. CHURCHILL

Count

Coudenhove -Kalerm

$ 5.00

This book, the autobiography of
Count Coudcnhove-Kalergi, is of
the deepest interest to all who
have at heart the cause of inter¬
national unity. Its author since
his youth has dedicated himself
to the ideal of a united Europe.
His idea first received practical
application with the Congress of
Europe in 1926 ; after the Second
World War it re-emerged with
greater strength, and from it has
sprung the Council of Europe.
Heedless of party labels, he has
enlisted at various times the
support of such men as Briand,
Stresemann, Amery, Masaryk,
Benes and Churchill, and his book
throws fascinating sidelights on
the statesmen of the between-war
period. It is an inspiring story of
thirty years’ patient and fruitful
work towards an ideal which, as
Sir Winston Churchill asserts in
his Introduction, “may be the
surest of all the guarantees against
the renewal of great wars.”

AN IDEA

CONQjUERS THE WORLD

Count Coudenhove-Kalergi

Libraiy Congress Cmd Catalog Jfmnbtr: 54-7134

Printed in Great Brilain
bf PiamU 9 Sons Ltd.
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To the memory

of

Ida Roland

Countess Coudenhove-Kalergi

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

INTRODUCTION by The Rt. Hon. Sir Winston S. Churchill ix

I. BORN IN TOKYO I

II. OUR BOHEMIAN CASTLE 1 4

III. MY EUROPEAN FATHER 22

IV. MY JAPANESE MOTHER 33

V. IMPERIAL VIENNA 4 1

VI. IDA ROLAND 53

VU. WORLD WAR I 60

VIU. SOVIET-MUNICH 69

IX. PRESIDENT MASARYK 8 1

X. THE PUZZLE THAT WAS EUROPE 89

XI. I START A MOVEMENT 98

XII. CROSSING THE OCEAN II3

XIII. THE FIRST CONGRESS OF EUROPE 1 23

XIV. YEARS OF PILGRIMAGE 1 29

XV. FRANCO-GERMAN MEDIATION I4I

XVI. BRIAND ACTS 1 52

XVII. AN ISLAND OF PEACE 1 68

XVIII. CROSSING hitler’s PATH 1 76

XIX. I CALL ON MUSSOLINI 1 86

XX. THE DOLLFUSS TRAGEDY 194

XXI. THE FALL OF AUSTRIA 202

XXII. MEETING CHURCHILL 213

XXIU. WAR AND FLIGHT 220

XXIV. NEW YORK AND ITS WOODS 233

XXV. A EUROPEAN CONGRESS IN EXILE 245

XXVI, I GAIN AMERICAN SUPPORT 253

XXVII, BACK TO EUROPE 262

XXVUI. ACTION THROUGH PARLIAMENTS 2^2

XXIX. THE DAWN OF EUROPE UNITY 284

XXX. VICTORY 295

INTRODUCTION

by

The Rt. Hon. SIR WINSTON S. CHURCHILL

Ideas are bom as sparks fly upwards. They die from their
own weakness; they are whirled away by the wind; they
are lost in the smoke; they vanish in the darkness of the
night.

Someone throws another log of trouble and effort,
and fresh myriads or sparks stream ineffectually into the
air. Men have always tended these fires, casting into
them the fruits of their toil, indeed, all they can spare
after keeping body and soul together. Sometimes at rare
intervals something exciting results from their activities.
Among innumerable sparks that flash and fade away,
there now and again gleams one that lights up not only
the immediate scene, but the whole world.

So when the idea of the United States of Europe drifted
off upon the wind and came in contact with the immense
accumulation of muddle, waste, particularism and pre¬
judice which had long lain piled up in the European
garden, it became quite evident that a new series of
events had opened.

The resuscitation of the Pan-European idea is largely
identified with Count Coudenhove-Kalergi. The form
of his theme may be crude, erroneous and impracticable
but the impulse and the inspiration are true.

The movement towards European solidarity which
has now begun will not stop until it has effected tre¬
mendous and possibly decisive changes in the whole life,
thought and structure of Europe. It does not follow even
that this progress will be gradual. It may leap forward
in a huge bound on spontaneous conviction. It may even

INTRODUCTION

prove to be the surest means of lifting the mind of
European nations out of the ruck of old feuds and
ghastly revenges. It may afford a rallying ground where
socialists and capitalists, where nationalists and pacifists,
where idealists and business men may stand together.
It may be the surest of all the guarantees against the
renewal of great wars.

Winston S. Churchill

CHAPTER I

BORN IN TOKYO

One day in the early spring of 1896 a strange-looking caravan
travelled along a highway in western Bohemia. Starting from the
railway station of the historic Czech town of Domailice, it wound
its way northward toward the little town of Ronsperg and its
old castle. From time to time, as the caravan mounted the crest
of the hills on the highway, the castle rose visible in the distance,
for it, too, stood on a hill, surveying the plain as far as the
distant green mountain chain in the west, the Bohemian Forest,
which marked the frontier of Bavaria.

The little town of Ronsperg, with its two thousand German-
speaking inhabitants, served as the unofficial capital of the
estate, but the major part of the domain spread west of Rons¬
perg toward the hills of the forest, covered with straight, dark
fir trees. Here stags and deer, roc and Corsican mountain sheep,
foxes and hares were at home in the thick underbrush.

The plain of the estate embraced farms and herds of sheep
and Swiss cattle which wandered over the wide fields and
meadows.

Over all this Ronsperg Castle stood broad and solid on its
hill, white walls covered with ivy, high roof of tiles black with
the continuous smoke of chimneys. Its stone walls, ten feet
thick, had withstood many sieges. Like an old tree, the castle
had grown throughout the centuries, stretching its branches in
all directions. In different generations new wings had been
added, so that it had become irregular and unbalanced on its
various sides. Like smaller trees around a large one, a number
of smaller buildings gathered around the castle—the houses of
officers of the estate, of coachmen and gardeners, the stables
filled with carriages and sledges, the greenhouse, and the other
buildings. Linked to the castle by a suspended wooden gallery
was a second long cottage, built much later than the main
castle, with apartments for guests on the upper floors and offices

3 AN IDEA CONQUERS THE WORLD

for the administration of the estate below. Around the castle
was a large park with century-old trees and flower-beds, all
surrounded by a high wall of rough stones that separated the
little world within from the great world without. . . . And the
little world within was full of life today, preparing to welcome
home for the first time the children of the master of the castle,
who had come all the way from the opposite side of the
globe.

The caravan followed the winding highway, with its border
of apple and plum trees, through the quiet fields and colourful
villages. It comprisedjthrec carriages, each drawn by two horses
decorated with yellow and red, the colours of the Coudenhoves.
The second carriage was occupied by men who were plainly
high officials, and the last was overloaded with trunks and
parcels. But the first carriage was occupied by a group of
passengers such as had never before been seen in this remote
county of Bohemia, in the very heart of Europe.

Next to the driver sat an elderly man who was a contrast to
the coachman and his fine attire. He looked fierce and vigorous,
dressed in the native costume of the Caucasian mountaineer;
an oriental dagger hung from his broad cartridge belt; his
eyes were black and sparkling, and a powerful nose protruded
above a huge grey moustache. On his head was a bright red
fez with a black tassel.

Inside the carriage sat two smiling Japanese women, wearing
the colourful costume of their country. On their laps rode two
little boys, two years and one year old, dressed in Japanese
baby costumes.

For two hours the caravan moved towards Ronsperg, where
the townsfolk had gathered in the street to see the carriage
as it rolled through the broad gate of the park toward the
entrance of Ronsperg Castle.

This castle, where the caravan finally came to a halt at the
home of the Coudenhove-Kalergi family.

The Coudenhoves had always been conservatives, following
their dukes, kings, and emperors blindly through reform and

BORN IN TOKYO 3

revolution from the Netherlands to Belgium and again from
Belgium to Austria.

Among their ancestors was Charlemagne, and beautiful
Saint Elisabeth, Duchess of Thliringen and daughter of a
Hungarian king. The Kalergis, on the other hand, had been
traditional revolutionaries, fighting and dying for the liberty
of their native island of Crete, first against its Venetian masters,
then against its Turkish oppressors. Both families had been
compelled by political events to emigrate from their countries
of origin to distant lands, growing more and more European
as they inter-married with daughters of different nations.
Finally they united when Count Franz Coudenhove, a junior
member of the Austrian Embassy, married his young cousin
Marie Kalergi, heiress to the Kalergi fortune, in Paris in the
middle of the nineteenth century.

The Coudenhove line reaches back to the eleventh century.
Two brothers Coudenhove joined the first Crusade in 1099,
when Jerusalem was conquered for the first time by the
united armies of the Christian knights of Europe. They
belonged to the oldest nobility of North Brabant, now part
of the Netherlands. At the end of the eighteenth century
the Coudenhoves were made counts of the Holy Roman Em¬
pire. But when the French Revolution swept over Belgium,
the first Count Coudenhove left his native country. His son
became an Austrian general and married a Baltic baroness.
One of the sons of this international couple followed his father’s
career, and saved, by the greatest cavalry charge in modern
history, the retreating Austrian army at the Batde of Koenig-
graetz, after it had been defeated by the Prussians. His brother
chose a diplomatic career and founded the line of the Couden-
hove-Kalergis by marrying the Kalergi heiress.

The story of the Kalergi family centres on Crete. In the
tenth century, after Crete had been reconquered from the
Arabs by the great Greek emperor Nikophor Phokas, a branch
of his family settled down in this strategic outpost of the Byzan¬
tine Empire. When, three hundred years later, Venice became
the dominant power in the Mediterranean, Alexios Kalergis

4 AN IDEA CON(iUERS THE WORLD

signed the treaty with Venice which transformed Crete into a
Venetian dominion. A chronicle recalls that on that occasion
the Phokas of Crete changed their name into Kalergis ‘because
of the beautiful act of peace’, the name of Kalergis being
composed of the Greek words Aa/on, meaning beautiful, and
ergon, meaning action.

But this peace did not last. Thirty years later three brothen
Kalergis fought at the head of a national revolution against
Venice. Though they paid for their defeat with their lives,
the family remained throughout the following centuries the first
on the island. And in Venice one of the most beautiful
palaces, white marble worked like lace, the house where
Richard Wagner lived and died, stands as a monument of
their name; the Palazzo Vendramin-Calergi.

After Greece had recovered its freedom, the Kalergis con¬
tinued their historic role. It was again a General Kalergis who
overthrew the first King of Greece, Otto I, and his Wittelsbach
dynasty; and the former Premier of Greece, Emmanuel Tsou-
deros, was also a member of the Kalergis family.

In the eighteenth century one of the Kalergis, involved in a
conspiracy against Turkish rule, fled to Russia and became
a general of the Czarina Catherine II. He married a Norwegian
and acquired a great fortune.

The only son of this couple, Johannes Kalergis, married the
beautiful young Countess Marie Nesselrode, niece and adopted
daughter of Russia’s all-powerful Chancellor, Count Charles
Nesselrode.

On account of the husband’s jealousy, the marriage soon
ended in divorce. Johannes lived in London, became a British
subject and dropped the ‘s ’ of his name. Marie went to Paris and
started an amazing career. By a unique combination of beauty,
spirit, virtue, generosity, charm and wealth, she fascinated
everyone she met: Balzac, Chateaubriand, Musset, Merimee,
Delacroix and all the great figures of Paris half way through
the century. She early sponsored Richard Wagner’s career and
remained all her life one of his close friends. Wagner tells in
his Mimoires how she spontaneously gave him 10,000 gold-

BORN IN TOKYO

5

francs to cover the losses of his Paris concerts. Later he presented
her with the manuscript of Tristan and Isolde and dedicated
one of his pamphlets to her.

When Heinrich Heine saw her for the first time, he ex¬
claimed: ‘This is no woman, but a cathedral of love!’ He
praised her beauty in one of his oriental poems: ‘The White
Elephant’. Theophile Gautier also wrote a poem about her
beauty: ‘La Symphonie en Blanc Majcur’,* he calls her a
‘ Madonna of the snows, a white sphynx sculptured by winter ’.

Equally at home in Paris, St. Petersburg, Warsaw and
Baden-Baden, Marie Kalergis all her life travelled throughout
Europe, stopping on her way at the castles of her numerous
friends and relatives. Politically this ‘White Fairy’, as she was
generally called, was a genuine European. Though she loved
her mother’s Polish people, she remained faithful to the Czar
and did all she could to reconcile Poles and Russians. She also
tried to prevent the Crimean War and, sifter it broke out, to
end it as rapidly as possible. At that time Empress Eugdnie
of France called her a ‘diplomat in a crinoline’. Her friend¬
ship with many kings, queens and statesmen, such as Napoleon
III, Prince Bismark and his Emperor William I, gave her great
political influence. Her genuine love, however, was not politics,
but art. A few years before her death she married a Russian
nobleman. Serge de Mouchanofif, head of the Imperial Theatre
of Warsaw, whom she assisted energetically in his artistic work.

One of Chopin’s favourite disciples, she was an accomplished
pianist, moving Rossini to tears by her music. Franz Liszt
too W2is among her friends and admirers. When she died, he
composed an ‘ Elegy on Marie Kalergis ’; he wrote to a friend
that she had left ‘the memory of a soul dreaming, seeking,
grasping and performing what was good, beautiful and ideal;
in her was some mysterious note, the chord of which sounds
only in heaven! ’

Her only child, named Marie Kalergis like herself, grew up

* Under this title a book was published by Constantin Photiades, Edition Plan,
Paris, 1929.

Marie Kalergis’ letters to her daughter were published in 1906 by Ceroid &
Sohn, Vienna.

6

AN IDEA CONQ,UERS THE WORLD

in a Catholic convent in Paris, to be still more international
than her mother, combining Russian nationality with the
Greco-Scandinavian blood of her father and the German-
Polish origin of her mother. By education she had become a
French lady; through her early marriage to Franz Coudenhove
she became a member of the Austrian aristocracy.

After Johannes Kalergis’ death, this couple bought three
estates: the Castle of Ottensheim in Upper Austria, one of the
most romantic places in the lovely valley of the Danube; the
big estate of Zamuto in the wild mountains of the Hungarian
Carpathians, the richest hunting grounds of Europe (there were
Hungarian stags, bears, lynxes, wolves and wild boars), and
finally, the castle and estate of Ronsperg in Bohemia. He gave
up his diplomatic career to devote himself to the management
of these properties. The Emperor appointed him a member
of the Austrian House of Lords, the ‘Herrenhaus’, and he
joined the Conservatives.

But the happy years of Franz Coudenhove were numbered.
His beloved wife died at thirty-six, leaving him alone with six
ittle children. Faithful to the memory of his wife, he never
remarried, but became as hard and despotic as he was unhappy,
misunderstanding his children and misunderstood by them.

Two of his sons were remarkable—Heinrich and his younger
brother Hans. Hans Coudenhove’s unusual destiny took him
from Ronsperg Castle to a life in the wilderness of Africa. After
his father’s death he gave up his diplomatic career, left Europe,
disgusted with Western civilization and its hypocrisy, and
established himself in the African jungles. All efforts of his
friends and relatives to bring him back to Europe failed. He
had fallen in love with the Dark Continent and its over¬
whelming natural phenomena. In his book My African Neighbours:
Man, Bird and Beast in Nyasaland^, which appeared just before his
death in 1925, he confesses:

I have never seen an airplane, or a dirigible balloon, or a motor-bus,
or a taxicab, or a motor-boat, or a wireless apparatus, or a cloud-
picture, or the president of a republic, or a portrait of Einstein,
* Little, Brovm and Co., Boston.

BORN IN TOKYO

7

or a Bolshevik. Incidentally, I have not slept in a bed for twelve
years, having acquired the habit of sleeping on a deck-chair instead,
under conditions which made it advisable that I should be ‘ up and
doing’ and ‘all there’ within half a second of waking up.

I am not a stranger to the joys and comforts of European society,
such as they existed up to thirty years ago, and I confess, with all
due respect for the prophets of progress, that I have never missed
a single one of them—not for a single day.

The Arab poet opines that it is one of the three great joys of
life to ‘ride on camels through country unknown’. The greatest
of all felicities, I think, is to lie stretched out in one’s open tent on a
ridge, after a fatiguing forenoon’s march, and to look down over
miles on uninhabited Nyika, one’s faithful dogs asleep at one side.

Heinrich Coudenhove shared his brother’s love for nature
and for distant lands. But his life took a very different course.
Born in Vienna in 1859, he had been educated by the Jesuits.
After having studied law he took up a diplomatic career. His
first post was Athens, his second Rio de Janeiro. In the jungles
of Matto Grosso he shot two huge silver lions and two jaguars,
the largest ever shot by a white man. Years later he was proud
to show us his name and still-unbroken world record registered
in The Sportsman's Handbook.

From Rio his career took him to Constantinople, the capital
of the cruel despot of Turkey, Abdul Hamid, whom Heinrich
despised because of his methods of government, based on cor¬
ruption and cruelty. But in spite of his horror of Abdul Hamid
and his politics my father loved Constantinople, where he
spent three happy years in the Austro-Hungarian embassy.
Here he learned Turkish, Arabic, and Hebrew, and plunged
into the history, philosophy, and civilization of Islam. Here
at last his early interest in the Orient could be satisfied, and in
many respects he came to prefer the Oriental to the Western
way of life: it was, he thought, nearer nature and nearer God;
he liked civilization which seemed penetrated by religion and
free from Western materialism. Later he emphasized how,
during the Dark Ages, Arabic civilization had been superior
to that of Germanic Europe, and his sympathies in the matter
of the Crusades were definitely on the side of the Arabs and

6 AN IDEA C 0 NQ,UERS THE WORLD

not of the Christians, who seemed to him little more than
barbaric invaders of Syria and Palestine. The only Christian
emperor of that period Heinrich admired was Frederic II
of Sicily, who had been brought up in the midst of Arabic
culture and whose successful Crusade was accomplished with¬
out bloodshed. My father often quoted an Arabic author who
declared that three times in history the progress of civilization
had been interrupted: the first time when the Persians were
defeated by the Greeks at Salamis; the second time when the
Arabs were defeated by the Franks between Tours and Poitiers,
and the third time when the Turks were defeated by Austrians
and Poles beneath the walls of Vienna. Heinrich did not quite
share this point of view, but he considered it defensible.

Next there came a brief mission to Buenos Aires, and then
my father’s dreams materialized. He was sent to the Far East,
to Tokyo. As there was no Austrian Resident in Tokyo, and
he was at that time the highest official of the legation, Heinrich
became Charge d’Affaires and was for two years at the head
of the Austrian legation, in spite of his youth and his brief
career. Promptly he set about learning Japanese and studying
Buddhism, the religion that had attracted him since he first
admired Schopenhauer’s philosophy based on Buddhist ideas.

Heinrich devoted much thought to Japanese problems, until
he became convinced that this little group of islands would
one day play a decisive role in the history of our planet. Many
years later he reread his reports from Tokyo in the files of the
Foreign office in Vienna and was proud to state that his political
predictions had been fulfilled: the Anglo-Japancse alliance, the
Russo-Japanese war, Japan’s victory over Russia, and Japan’s
rise to the rank of a great power. He also became a scholar
of Japanese culture and sought out a number of Japanese
statesmen, first of them Prince Ito, the real founder of the
modern Japanese empire and one of the outstanding statesmen
of his period.

From all his diplomatic posts my father made long trips to
see as much as possible of the world, and especially of the world
he loved, the Orient. Some time was spent with his relatives

BORN IN TOKYO

9

in Russia. He visited China, Korea, and India, where he
learned Hindustani and had a young elephant as pet. He made a
trip through the Caucasus and was almost drowned at Bangkok,
where one pitch-dark night he fell into the Mcnam River. As
a result of these voyages he finally spoke sixteen languages.
French and English he spoke as well as his mother tongue,
and he could read aloud any book written in one of these
three languages in either of the two others, without it being
apparent that he was translating.

As was natural for a man of his mental abilities, Heinrich
acquired during his voyages an amazing knowledge of the
world and its cultural and political problems. Naturally in¬
quisitive and interested in knowing and learning everything, he
wasted no time as he travelled, but used to work from the early
morning till late at night. He always tried to see problems
not from an Austrian or European point of view, but from
that of the native population.

By the time he was thirty-three, Heinrich Coudenhovc had
become a citizen of the world, a true cosmopolitan. He used
to say that travelling was the best way to prolong one’s life;
for, he said, time spent on a trip seems much longer than the
same time spent at home. Therefore a life filled with travels
was practically much longer than a life spent in a single place.
And indeed, his short life was so filled with voyages, studies,
ideas, action, love, emotion, and accomplishment that it was
infinitely richer than most other lives long with empty years.

When in 1892 my father met my mother in Tokyo, they
were as different as creatures fallen from two planets. For
thousands of years there had been no contact between their
ancestors. They had been educated in completely different
schools. He was a Catholic, she a Buddhist. He had just started
to learn Japanese, while she hardly spoke any European lan¬
guage. She had never worn European dress, never dined in
a European house, never had contact with European men or
women. The young European with skin like white marble
and eyes like steel must have attracted and terrified her, whilst

10 AN IDEA CON(iUERS THE WORLD

he took a step into the unknown when he decided to marry
this smiling piece of ivory that was but a screen for a passion¬
ate soul trained in Oriental self-control.

Mitsuko Aoyama was born in Tokyo in 1874, only six years
after the revolution that began to transform the Empire of the
Rising Sun from a feudal state with medieval life and
civilization into a modem power.

Mitsuko’s education was hardly affected by this political
change. As a young girl she received a purely Japanese educa¬
tion, learned to read and write thousands of Chinese char¬
acters, to paint beautiful calligraphy, to count with old
wooden Japanese counting machines to learn how Japan
was created by the Goddess of the Sun, the ancestor of
the Emperor, and how Japan evolved through the centuries.
Her parents were Buddhists, and she learned the principles
of this Indian religion, together with the moral teachings of
the Chinese savant, Confucius. Beside this she learned about
innumerable Japanese gods and goddesses, with their
mythology, charming fairy tales which inspired her lucid
imagination. She was taught to worship the shrines of her
ancestors and to adore the memory of emperors and heroes.
She learned to express feelings and emotions in short poems,
to sing old Japanese songs and accompany them with two
Japanese instruments, one a kind of guitar and the other like
a mandolin.

When little Mitsuko walked to school, her hands were packed
in two little sacks full of dry peas, to give her fingers exercise
and make them elastic and gracious—they became so elastic
that she later used to play ball with the back of her hand. She
also learned the graceful ceremonies of tea making and to
arrange flowers according to old symbolic tradition. As
politeness is a cardinal virtue in the East, she was also
trained in perfect courtesy of speech and gesture, in the art
of dressing, of bowing, and of smiling. She learned to suppress
her emotions and to hide her expressions, to respect her elders,
to be gentle and kind. And she learned that a Japanese woman
must obey and devote her life first to her father, then to her

BORN IN TOKYO

II

husband, and finally to her eldest son. Beside this purely
national education she learned some words of English, the great
idiom of the West.

Mitsuko was eighteen when she met my father, who then
was thirty-three. From her pictures at that age one cannot
wonder that the young Austrian diplomat was fascinated by
her beauty, her Oriental grace, and her charm, for she was really
beautiful. Taller than the average Japanese, extremely slender
and well proportioned, her face was pure oval, her cheekbones
no more pronounced than those of Europeans, her lips full,
her nose small and delicate, her forehead round, her hair black
with bluish shadows. Her eyes, hidden behind long lashes and
usually only half-open, were lively and intelligent, in striking
contrast to her general calm. Her complexion was neither
white nor yellow, but ivory. Many Japanese who saw her
refused to believe that she was of pure Japanese stock; for a
Japanese she looked European—just as certain types among
pure Europeans look Japanese. Her hands were beautiful,
admired by all painters and sculpture who saw them, while
the long, slender fingers combined harmony with strength.
In them anyone who understood hands could sec that the
weakness of her appearance hid a strong personality. Heinrich
seemed to have known this: he used to compare her, not with a
lamb or deer, but with a black leopard. And I believe he knew
my mother better than anybody else.

Heinrich loved this ivory figure with all his passion, and she
loved him as a man loves destiny or as a hero embraces adven¬
ture. It flattered her that a ‘daimio’ from the fairyland of the
distant West, representing a great empire, had fallen in love
with her and asked her hand. According to the Japanese
tradition, it was not she who could decide if she would marry
this mysterious stranger, but her father. It was for Kihatchi
Aoyama to give his consent, and finally he gave it. Mitsuko
obeyed her father, just as she would, from now on, obey her
husband. But this act of obedience was done with secret
pride, with hope and curiosity—and almost with love for the
strange man who had become her destiny.

i2 AN IDEA CON(i,UERS THE W6RLD

For Heinrich the marriage was more complicated than for
Mitsuko. Never before had a member of the European diplo¬
matic corps married a Japanese. Could he imagine Mitsuko
as the hostess of an Austrian embassy, in London, or in Wash¬
ington, Petersburg, or Paris? It was still his ambition one
day to become ambassador, or even the foreign minister of his
country, a successor to Prince Metternich.

But now he loved Mitsuko more than he loved his career—
he could well imagine a life without a career, but not life
without her. First he planned to resign, to give up his rights
as the heir of his estates in favour of his younger brother, and
to settle in Sumatra on a rubber plantation. But meanwhile
his father had died and Mitsuko bore a son, baptized Hans.
This son Heinrich wished to be his heir; he gave up
his plans to go to Sumatra and decided to ask to have his
marriage recognized by Emperor Franz Joseph, by the Church,
and by the Mikado. With his boundless energy he overcame
the innumerable obstacles set by his superiors, by tradition
and convention, by social and by racial prejudice. Mitsuko
was baptized with great pomp by the archbishop of Tokyo
in the cathedral of that city.

The Empress of Japan received the wife of Austria’s diplo¬
matic representative. She gave her a priceless fan of carved
ivory and made her promise never to forget in Europe the
honour of Japan. From Ronsperg, family jewels were sent to
Tokyo to decorate the new Countess Coudenhove, christ¬
ened Maria Theda, but called by her husband and her
friends all her life ‘Mitsu’, between her Japanese name
and ‘Mizzi’, the Austrian nickname for Mary.

To make sure Mitsu would have a social position correspond¬
ing to her new ofTicial position, Heinrich informed the
diplomatic corps and the leaders of the European colony
that he stood ready to challenge to a duel anyone who
did not give his wife the same respect as if she were of
purest European blood. Heinrich was never obliged to carry
out this threat, for whoever met Mitsu was attracted and
touched by her beauty and her modesty, and the European

BORN IN TOKYO I3

colony was always glad to be entertained by this charming
hostess.

I was bom the second son of this unusual couple, on the
seventeenth of November 1894. Before I was born, my father
wished to take my mother to Hongkong so that I might be
born on British soil and therefore come into the world as a
British subject. But before he could carry out his plan, the Sino-
Japancse War broke out and he was forced to stay in Tokyo.

In the first days of my life I was so weak that a French
missionary, living near, was called to baptize me in a hurry.
Since I refused to drink, it seemed doubtful whether I would
survive. Then a friend of my mother, a Baroness Ushida, who
was married to a Japanese diplomat and was noted for having
‘second sight’ called on my mother and saw the baby. ‘The
boy will survive,’ she said, ‘and grow up to be one day a famous
man!’

I had been christened Richard, because my father’s youngest
brother Richard was my godfather. But for my Japanese grand¬
parents I always kept my Japanese name ‘Ejiro’, while my
parents and my family called me all my life ‘ Dicky ’.

At the beginning of 1896 my father decided to make a trip
to Europe to show his home to his young wife and to introduce
her to his family.

After we had arrived in Suez, my brother and I were sent
ahead to Ronsperg, accompanied by our two Japanese nurses
and by my father’s Armenian butler, who served as their guide
and interpreter. Meanwhile my parents went to see Egypt, Pal¬
estine, and Italy. My father wished to show to my mother the
splendours of the Mediterranean and to present her to Pope
Leo XIII and to Emperor Franz Joseph.

So it came about that my brother and I arrived, ahead of our
parents, after a trip of four weeks across the Pacific, the Indian
Ocean, the Red Sea, and the Mediterranean, at our new home,
the old Castle of Ronsperg.

CHAPTER II

OUR BOHEMIAN CASTLE

Boyhood in Ronsperg was as calm and carefree as a beautiful
dream. Guided and protected by a strong and brilliant father
and blessed by a lovely mother, my childhood was a succession
of serene and happy days. The castle, with its vast grounds
and its park, was an island of peace which the world never
penetrated. From time to time talk was heard of distant wars
and revolutions, but we seemed to live on another planet, far
removed from all such misery, grief, and sorrow. First a nun
from a near-by convent instructed us, then a tutor came to give us
private lessons. Twice a year the teachei-s of the town came to
the castle, examined us and reported to my father on the results.

During these early years I had only one friend—my elder
brother Hans, who had been born the year before me. We were
educated like twins, always sharing the same room and the
same interests.

With Hans I played away the years of early childhood, in
and out of the casde. One of our favourite playgrounds was the
little courtyard leading, on the right, to the large kitchens and
the wine cellars and, on the left, to a little chapel. Here every
Saturday a mass was celebrated for us, for which we acted as
ministrants looking like little priests. Inside the castle our play
branched out from our schoolroom on the first floor to the
billiard-room and the theatre hall, with its ever-fascinating
stage, decorations, lights, costumes, and curtains. Up the main
staircase, adorned with my father’s exotic trophies, we found
on the second floor the dining-room decorated with forbidding
pictures of our ancestors. Here also were the bedrooms, ours and
our parents’, and here, too, was the real centre of the castle,
its most beautiful room. This was my father’s study, high walls
covered with the thousands of books he had collected, and in
the middle his enormous writing-desk, on which sat a beautiful
Japanese Buddha surrounded by little busts of Goethe, Schiller,

OUR BOHEMIAN CASTLE I5

Napoleon and Homer. On wooden columns around the room
stood other busts—Socrates, Plato, Marcus Aurelius, Kant,
Schopenhauer—and in the midst of them Jesus Christ, and
beside Him a reproduction of Michelangelo’s ‘ Moses’. Above
the study door was a rare picture of the great founder of
the Persian religion, Zoroaster, and in the niches of the win¬
dows were Arabian calligraphs with quotations from the
Koran, and, on the huge safe, a marble statue of the Indian
God of Wealth, with an elephant’s trunk instead of a nose.

Here in this room I liked to sit, as a little boy, motionless,
watching my father reading or writing at his desk. When I
grew older I would stare at my father’s big globe, turning it
over and over again, following with my fingers the route I
had taken as a child from Tokyo to Ronsperg. When I looked
at the Japanese islands, I saw my grandparents, Kihatchi and
Yonne, sitting in Japanese dress in their little garden, and
dreaming of their daughter and grandchildren beyond the
seas. Then I looked at the vast green blotch which separated
Austria from Japan, my father’s land from my mother’s, and
I remembered that this Russian empire had been governed
two generations ago by our uncle Nesselrode. Austria, of course,
was familiar to me, and Bohemia and Hungary; so also was
Germany, whose frontiers I had so often crossed on walks and
excursions. In the Netherlands I recognized the cradle of our
family and in Belgium the country where we had lived for
centuries. When I looked at France I recalled that my grand¬
father’s grandfather, who still bore the half-French name of
Coudenhovc dc la Fretture, had passed his youth as a page of
Queen Marie Antoinette at Versailles. And it was to Spain
that Jacques dc Coudenhove had hurried from Rome to bring
to his sovereign, Charles V, the amazing news that his army
had stormed and plundered Rome and was besieging the Pope.
In the Mediterranean my eyes fell on Crete, the cradle of the
Kalcrgis; then on Greece, their nation and country; and on
Italy, where their name has become a part of the fame of Venice;
on Jerusalem, where the first Goudenhoves had fought to
reconquer the Holy Sepulchre from the infidels. And when I

l6 AN IDEA CONQ,UERS THE WORLD

looked at England I thought of my great-grandfather Kalergi,
that strange misanthropist and lonely millionaire, while Scan¬
dinavia recalled to me his mother, who had come from the
distant city of Bergen.

When my eyes left Europe and turned to Africa, I imagined
my uncle living with his black servants and animal pets, far
from civilization; and across the Atlantic, in the middle of
South America, I dreamed of the Brazilian jungle where
Father had shot the jaguars whose skulls now hung as trophies
over his fireplace.

The whole globe seemed to me connected with my life and
family. And when I looked at the globe of the sky, opposite that
of the earth, the tiny little ball of our planet seemed to me like
a boat, sailing with me and my far-flung family, across an
ocean of stars, from a dark and unknown past to a dark and
unknown future. I loved to gaze at the stars, when on clear
winter nights our sleds carried us, wrapped in furs, through
snowy plains and hills home to the castle. I realized with
amazement the infinity of space and time, and never cezised to
think about it. But at the same time I had made another
boyhood discovery that seemed to me just as startling: that
nothing was certain and that everything was possible. These
two notions were the start of my thinking.

The two borders which hemmed in our estate—the customs
boundary toward Germany and the national boundary toward
the Czechs—gave me a realistic impression of the futility of
nationalism.

From my earliest youth I sensed the damage done by
economic frontiers, cutting up natural landscape and dividing
people speaking the same language into separate units. When
I took a walk or drive to the nearest village in Bavaria, I was
cross-examined by the Austrian and by the German frontier
guards. Again and again I heard stories and rumours of
smugglers who had crossed the border by night and who had
been arrested or shot. I was told that all this was necessary
to protect the national market, but in spite of these explanations

OUR BOHEMIAN CASTLE 17

I made no sense of it and used to consider all these pre¬
cautions mainly as a nuisance. One day my father showed
me the passport he had needed for a trip to Russia and
explained that such uncivilized countries as Russia and Turkey
had introduced these papers to control aliens. We would never
have believed then that one day we should need similar docu¬
ments to cross the frontiers of Germany, Italy, England, France,
and all other Western nations.

The other frontier we could see from the windows of the
castle was still more interesting—the linguistic frontier separat¬
ing Czechs from Sudeten. I soon realized there was a deep
conflict and mutual contempt between these two nations and
that the main reason for this was that they spoke different
languages. Although I did not speak Czech I had no prejudice
whatever against the Czechs, for I found the few Czechs I
knew just as nice, kind, and intelligent as the Germans. So all
this national hatred seemed to me the ridiculous consequence
of ignorance and poor education.

In striking contrast to the national hatred that surrounded it,
our casde was an oasis of international spirit. My mother was
not the only Oriental in our house. She represented the Far
East; the Near East was represented by Babik Kaligian, the
Armenian butler who stood at the head of the household.
When my father served at the legation at Constantinople he
had saved Babik’s life from the Armenian massacres of Sultan
Abdul Hamid. From then on Babik followed him through the
world, a faithful servant whose extraordinary physical strength
and courage made him a perfect bodyguard and whose natural
intelligence and loyalty made him a good companion. Babig
spoke Turkish to my father, Japanese to my mother, and a
broken German to us children. He was old. When asked how
old, he replied, ‘Sixty-five or seventy-five—I not know.’ In
his youth no one had cared to register his date of birth.

On his deathbed Babik found that he had not reckoned
with the forces of religious prejudice. As he was an Armenian
Christian and the churchyard was Catholic, he could not be
buried near his master unless he became Catholic. Babik’s

l8 AN IDEA CONQ,UERS THE WORLD

highest religion had been his devotion to my father; so
he became Catholic on his deathbed to be buried, far away
from his native land, near his beloved and admired master. Wc
had every reason to respect this faithful Oriental, Babik Kaligian.

I also remember a distinguished Hindu scholar who spent
six months at our castle, Abdullah Mahmun Suhraworthy—
a descendant of the Caliph Abu Bekr and an extremely religious
Mohammedan, who had come to study German with my father
while the latter read Hindu and Arabic texts with him.
Before his arrival from London, where he had studied law, we
found out the exact direction of Mecca and marked it in his
room, so that Suhraworthy would know in what direction to
make his daily prayers. Whenever we ate pork or hare, he
was served veal; and when we drank wine or champagne, we
offered him lemonade. We watched him during his prayers
and questioned him much about Mohammedanism, its history
and origin. We liked to walk with him in the park and to learn
about that distant and fascinating world of India and its
mysteries. My brother and I were extremely fond of this charm¬
ing, gay, and wise Indian, with his fine features, his dark com¬
plexion, his slender figure, and his enormous, bright, gentle,
and unforgettably expressive eyes. And we would have laughed
at any one who dared to consider this Indian scholar cis
belonging to an inferior race. For he was superior to most of
the Europeans whom we knew.

Suhraworthy was strongly anti-British and had many argu¬
ments about the Indian question with my father, who believed
that the advantages of the British rule of India largely over¬
shadowed its drawbacks. But Suhraworthy seems later to have
made his peace with the British, for he died in 1935 in Bombay as
Sir Abdullah-el-Mamun al Suhrawardy, after a brilliant career.

I believe that my father inspired young Suhraworthy to go
as a Mohammedan missionary to Tokyo, because he believed
that this religion corresponded better to the Japanese character
than Christianity. And it also was my father who advised him
to publish a book, selected quotations from Mohammed. This
book, The Sayings of Mohammed, was later republished with a

OUR BOHEMIAN CASTLE I9

preface by Gandhi; and, curiously enough, it was this little book
that was found in the pocket of Leo Tolstoy’s cloak the day he
fled from his castle to his lonely death.

Soon after having left Ronsperg, Suhraworthy founded in
London the Pan-Islamic Society and became its first secretary.
Its aim was to establish closer cultural and political union
between the three hundred million Mohammedans, from the
Dutch East Indies to Morocco, if possible under a single caliph.
As he hated Sultan Abdul Hamid he suggested as caliph,
the Sultan of Morocco, a descendant of the Prophet.

Thus, listening to Suhraworthy when he developed his fav¬
ourite idea of Pan-Islam, I learned for the first time the con¬
ception of a Pan-movement, of a group of divergent countries
and people banding together in common cause to defeat the
barriers the world had placed around their existence. From
then on I saw world problems through different eyes.

Another Oriental who spent some summer weeks every year
in Ronsperg was my father’s Turkish teacher, Saad-ed-Din,
professor at the Viennese Consular Academy, a modern and
reformist Turk of Albanian stock, who spoke much about the
complicated problems of the Balkans and the Near East.

I also recall Doctor Poznansky, the learned rabbi of Pilsen,
who assisted my father in his studies of Hebrew and of the
Talmud. When he came to see us we respected his ritual
rules, giving him trout in place of the meat served to the
others. We came to regard these different religious diets as
quite natural, because we also respected strictly the ritual
rules of our Catholic religion and would have found it very
shocking if one of us had dared to cat meat on a Friday.

The first American I ever met was an American officer, an
ex-scrviccman who had taken part in the occupation of the
Philippines. After my father had learned that he had arrived
at our inn on a shooting trip, he immediately invited him to
move from the inn to the castle and spend some days as
his guest. I remember a tall, good-looking, and strong man,
speaking of the Philippine campaign and of President Roosevelt,
for whom my father had a high esteem, just as he profoundly

20 AN IDEA CONQ.UERS THE WORLD

admired President Lincoln and considered his war for the pre¬
servation of the Union as one of the greatest events of history.

Another guest was the Catholic bishop of Hakodate, a French
missionary who had gone in his youth to Japan and there met
my parents. Now he was back in Europe, for the first time in
thirty years. My father had invited the learned parson of our
little town to dinner to meet him, and eis this priest spoke no
French and the bishop no German, we listened to their fluent con¬
versation in Latin, the Esperanto of the Catholic Church. When
they spoke about the railway, they simply invented a Latin word
by translating its elements via/errata —and understood each other
perfectly. This was my first practical experience with an inter¬
national language, and again my horizon was broadened.

Not only our exotic guests but also the ordinary members of
our household presented an international group. We always had
an English and a French governess, and our English governess
was always a Protestant. My mother had a Hungarian com¬
panion, my father a Bavarian secretary and a Czech manager
of his estates. Our tutor was Austrian, while among the ser¬
vants who attended our meals one was Armenian, the second
Czech, and the third Sudeten. It is evident that in such
society no word could be uttered that might have offended any
national, religious, or racial feelings, and that only a spirit of
broadmindedness and absolute tolerance could preserve the
harmonious life in the castle. And because of the many contacts
we had with the East, we were conscious of the fact that Europe
represented, above all national dissensions, a single branch of
humanity. Europe seemed to be anything but a union from the
mere European point of view. Only on a world-wide back¬
ground did this unity manifest itself.

Our own life was permanently confronted with that back¬
ground, with the contrasts between the East and West. Our
father represented Europe, our mother Asia. These continents
were no abstractions for us boys, but realities. Among ourselves,
we always chatted about the two different worlds that sur¬
rounded and penetrated us—‘The Japanese’ and ‘The
Europeans’, Germans, French, English, Czechs, Hungarians

OUR BOHEMIAN CASTLE 21

—all belonged to the one great paternal class of Europeans,
children of a single race, a single continent, a single civilization,
and a single destiny. Their quarrels seemed stupid and ridi-
eulous. On the other hand, we always considered the Chinese
as some kind of cousins and read with pride the history of the
Mongol conquerors and of the great civilizations they had
created throughout Asia. We were conscious that they too
belonged to the same great race as our mother—by no means
inferior, but very different from white humanity.

If, at that time, I had heard anyone propose a United States
of Europe, I would have considered such a union as the most
reasonable and natural thing in the world—infinitely more
natural than the stupid threats and struggles between the
various members of the great European family of nations.

It is evident that our feelings during all these years were as
international as our surroundings and education. Still, I
remember once having—the only time in my life—a distinet fit
of nationalism. One day our father explained to us that, while
our eldest brother would one day inherit our Bohemian estates
and had to learn Czech, my younger brother, Gerolf, and I
would be heirs to the estate in Hungary. He started to teach
us Hungarian and promised us Hungarian nationality as soon
as we were eighteen. The result was that Gerolf and I
determined to become Hungarian nationalists, intensely inter¬
ested in Hungarian history and in everything that was going on
in the Hungarian parliament. We made a Hungarian flag and
waved it proudly on every occasion. We founded a ‘Hungarian
League ’, with only two members, for mutual assistance against
common ‘enemies’. This enemy ‘foreigner’ was our brother
Hans, the ‘Austrian’, against whom we fought ‘national’
battles in the swimming-pool and on the playgrounds. We soon
considered ourselves genuine Hungarian patriots, without ever
having been in Hungary.

When my father died our Hungarian lessons stopped, our
Hungarian estate was sold, and our Hungarian flag forgotten.
But many of the exhibitions of nationalism I saw in later years
seemed to me as senseless as this youthful outburst.

CHAPTER in

MY EUROPEAN FATHER

I WAS sure, as most children are, that I had the best parents in
the world. My affection for both of them was based on respect.

I loved them both, but I admired them still more. All the years
of my childhood were dominated by my father, and today, after
I have met great men of all nations, he lives in my memory as
one of the most remarkable personalities of them all. Even as a
child I knew that he represented my ideal of a man—strong and
kind, with a generous heart and perfect manners, bold by
nature and peaceful by inclination, never lazy and never vulgar.
As a devout Catholic he was deeply religious, but still extremely
tolerant. A cosmopolitan by nature, he was wise as a sage, the
friend of all evolution and of social progress and the implac¬
able enemy of any brand of demagogy or fanaticism.

My father, Heinrich Coudenhove-Kalergi, inspired my life
from its very beginning. I cannot remember when I did not
want to resemble him, and from earliest childhood I found him
a model and an ideal. I still see him before me, tall and slender,
with his quick and graceful movements, combining energy with
harmony. I see his big, grey-blue eyes under a beautiful and
high forehead over an aquiline nose. When he travelled, every¬
body took him for an Englishman; not only because his type
was definitely English, but also much of his character and his
attitude toward life.

Returning to Ronsperg in 1896, my father quickly became
aware that sound administration of the family estates was im¬
possible without his personal direction. This was the excuse
for which he had been looking, and, although he was offered
the post of minister to Siam, he gave up the diplomatic career
which his marriage had made so difficult to continue. This
decision was of vital importance to us children. Our Japanese
nurses, with whom we had exchanged our first words, were sent
home; for, with his decision, my father had made up his mind

MY EUROPEAN FATHER 23

that his children should not become cultural and intellectual
hybrids, but should be given a purely European education. So
we did not learn any Japanese, but instead German, English,
and French. I often wonder what would have become of me if
my father had not so decided, or if he had died before we came
to Europe. Then I might have grown up a Japanese child,
educated in Japanese schools to be a Japanese patriot; and not
only my mind and soul would have evolved differently, but my
features as well. For every living being adapts itself uncon¬
sciously to its surroundings, and many Europeans who spend
their lives in the Far E<ist acquire Oriental features. ... So not
nature but destiny made a European of me—a fact which, I feel,
prevented me from becoming a European isolationist, for it
makes me ever conscious that even Europe is but a branch of
the wider brotherhood of man which I have always considered
my true nation and fatherland.

Within this wider world, which stretches beyond religions,
races, and continents, my father began to educate us deliber¬
ately as Austrians, Christians, and Europeans. From our early
childhood he spent hours and hours with us children, gay
and natural as a child himself, personally giving us lessons
in Russian and Hungarian and supervising our entire education.
We lunched and dined with him and his guests, listening silently
to their cultural and political conversations. Almost every day,
even in rain and storm, he walked with us and answered our
childish questions about state and laws, life and religion. All his
words impressed themselves deeply on my mind and later
ripened to thoughts and actions, but more important than all
this intellectual influence was his unforgettable example of a
noble nature and strong character, of a genuine gentleman,
which provided me with basic values for all my future life.

My father’s pedagogic principles were sound. Although he
thought and wrote about sainthood, he did not dream of
educating us to be saints. All he wanted was to make perfect
gentlemen of us, and although his favourite book was the
Imitation of Christ by Thomas a Kempis, he gave us Jules Verne’s

24 AN IDEA CONQUERS THE WORLD

Around the World in 8 o Days and recommended us to choose its
hero, the English gentleman Phileas Fogg, as our model. He
wished us to be such good shots and fencers that nobody should
dare challenge us to duels. Despising soft and effeminate men, he
wished to give us a Spartan education, with mattresses of straw,
cold baths and open windows at all seasons of the year, and long
daily walks in all weather. He himself was an example of this
way of living; and he put great stress on our physical education.
When a noted acrobat once performed in Ronsperg he tried to
hire him for the supervision of our physical culture.

My father was against corporal punishment in principle, for
he had suffered much of it in his youth; but he was such a
passionate lover of truth that he still introduced ‘capital’
punishment for three major crimes: for cruelty to animals, for
theft, and for lying. Altogether my father believed more in the
capitalistic principle of rewards than in the primitive methods
of punishment. He gave us books of poems in Greek and
Latin, German, English, and French; and for every poem we
learned by heart he promised a specific sum of money, so that
we could always earn money by learning poetry. Another way
of earning money was—to eat. As we were delicate children
he wished us to put on weight, but without forcing us to eat
beyond our appetites. He weighed us every Saturday, and if
we had lost a pound we had to pay him from our modest
pocket-money the equivalent of one dime; but for every pound
we gained we received the same amount. As we were growing,
the advantage was definitely on our side; but we had every
reason not to eat too much, because an upset stomach meant a
loss of weight and consequently a fine. Usually, when in want
of money, I preferred to earn it by eating rather than by
learning. But from this double method I retained good health
and the memory of poems that stUl give me great pleasure.

In spite of our youth father began to educate us in money
matters. We had to note every penny we spent. He warned
us never to gamble, because his great-grandfather had gambled
away his vast estates in the Netherlands and he was afraid that
one of us might have inherited this disastrous passion. He

MY EUROPEAN FATHER 25

taught US never to touch principal, with the one exception of
spending it on the education of one’s children, for education
was but another form of capital. He said he would ask us
to give him our word of honour before we were of age that we
would never give a financial guarantee to anyone, for then we
would always have a respectable and legitimate excuse to
refuse if we were asked by friends to do so. He also said that
we ought to lend money to friends in need, but never more
than we were ready to lose, and to consider it a happy surprise
if we ever saw the money again. He also had us attend his
weekly conferences with his managers, when he discussed the
running of his estates, his woods, farms, and industries.

It is impossible to describe all the splendours of country life
of an Austrian nobleman, living in his castle on a large estate
in Franz Joseph’s empire. Such a life combined health with
security, dignity, wealth, leisure, and independence, giving
ample opportunity to do much good to a whole region and, at
the same time, govern a tiny kingdom of one’s own without
political responsibilities. Close contact with nature, with plants
and animals, together with all elements of real culture made
a beautiful, artistic and easy form of life. This was the life for
which my father exchanged his diplomatic career. And I believe
that he never regretted giving up ambition for independence,
his eternal wanderings for the stability of a farmer.

After he had seen most of the world, he suddenly, at thirty-
six, had enough of travelling and began to feel that he had
been losing the roots of his life in the wide world. Now he
sought to find them again in his homeland, and this restless man
was transformed into a stable gentleman farmer, loving his
Castle of Ronsperg, every tree of its park, every hill of its forest.
And he who had been a bachelor for so many years now became
an ideal husband and father who considered every day spent
away from his home and his family a day lost. Indeed, when he
had to be away from Ronsperg for only a few days, to visit
Prague, Vienna, or Budapest, he gave orders to the governess
to wire him daily reports on the children’s health. Knowing

26 AN IDEA CONQ,UERS THE WORLD

how easy it was merely to wire 'All children arc well’, he
ordered that the text of these daily telegrams had to mention
each child—‘Hansi is well, Dicky is well, Rolfi is well’, and
so on in detail—for he knew that this would make it much more
difficult to mislead him.

During the years he had been away from Europe, Heinrich
had developed the utmost contempt for European society—
for the ladies who were too fashionable to have children, who
lived for social gossip and forgot that they were women who
had to accomplish the natural duties of their sex. He hated
the young men who thought of nothing but racing and
gambling and considered themselves superior to human beings
who worked hard to earn their living. For political demagogues
with their narrow-minded and empty party slogans he cared
still less. Leo Tolstoy was the only aristocrat for whom he had
an intense and profound admiration. Like Tolstoy he wished
to use his wealth, his independence, and his knowledge to serve
the human race and human progress.

He jealously defended his independence after he had left the
diplomatic service, refusing any suggestion to run for Parlia¬
ment or to gain his father’s scat in the House of Lords. He
even gave up his rank as captain in the Austro-Hungarian
army when he decided to fight against the medieval custom
of duelling. Always he wished to be entirely free to express
unhampered his ideas and convictions. His secret motto was:
‘Let me run alone like a rhinoceros!’ But he never used it
publicly, so as not to offend his friends.

But my father could not be a private citizen, though he
would have liked it. Bohemia before the First World War was
legally a province of a democratic empire; but socially the
traditions of feudalism were alive throughout the country. Even
without rank or function my father was the first man of his dis¬
trict, with all the responsibilities and prerogatives attached to
this position. Only sixty years earlier, the peasants were still
serfs, and the count had the right to condemn them to be
flogged. Now all citizens were equal before the law—in theory,
but not in practice.

MY EUROPEAN FATHER 27

It was quite inconceivable to us children that the policeman
who used to stand in our little town might one day venture to
arrest us. Or that wc could be forced to appear before the court
and be condemned to prison.... As children wc had the feeling
that our only authority was our father; above him stood the
governor of Bohemia, who happened to be his close friend and
cousin, Count Karl Coudenhove; and above him only the
Emperor. All other authorities seemed not to concern us—
neither police, nor judges, nor mayors. This may have been
childish, but it was only a natural reaction to the fact that at the
Corpus Christi procession our father followed immediately after
the priest and that we followed him, whilst behind us came all
the dignitaries of the city and district. Wc alone had a balcony
in church; my father had the right to choose the priests for six
of our neighbouring parishes, for he contributed the funds for
their churches. He also financed the convent, where nuns
educated the young girls of the town, and several times a year he
invited the authorities of the town, the priests, the judges, the
teachers to dinner—invitations that were never reciprocated.
When the bishop came to Ronsperg for confirmation, he stayed
at the castle. There was no doubt that my father, although a
private citizen, was the first man of his region.

And my father liked it. Following the celebrated quotation
of Caesar, he preferred being first in importance in Rons¬
perg to being even second in Vienna. He was aware of his
responsibilities, and he exercised his authority in the most
human and patriarchal way. Everybody in need came to
him to ask for help; and where he could, he gave. He
found it natural to spend a great part of his income on the
poor of the district—in the same spirit as an aunt of his was
delighted every year to pay her taxes, for she thus had an
opportunity to show her gratitude to the state for everything
it had done for her during the year.

But these social obligations filled only a little part of my
father’s activities. The main part of his time was devoted to
the management of his estates, to his work as scholar and
author, and to the education of his children.

28 AN IDEA CONQ,UERS THE WORLD

All his actions and teachings were extremely human, since
he sought to teach us more by example than by discipline.
He always told us that we should treat the governess as politely
as if we had offended her the day before—because it was so
hard for a young English or French lady to serve abroad as a
governess. He always jumped to his feet when the youngest
governess came into the room, and when I once asked him if
it was true that handwriting was the key to human character,
he answered promptly: ‘The key to the character of any man
is his behaviour to women.’

My father was the first in the castle to rise in the morning:
in summer at four and in winter at five. Then he took a cold
bath at all seasons of the year, did gymnastic exercises, and
took a run through the park. Then he started to work and
continued throughout the day. In the evening he dressed in
white tie and came to dinner exactly as if he expected the
prime minister to be his guest. We all had to dress, since my
father believed in the value of form and thought it wrong to
honour his wife less than any guest of high rank. After dinner
he was happy and gay. A devout Catholic, he went to mass
with us every Sunday. But at one point in every Good Friday
service at the church near-by he ostentatiously got up and left
as a demonstration against a tradition which seemed to him a
symptom of intolerance and of injustice. The prayer for all
heathens and heretics was offered and followed by general
bending of knees. Then, at the end of this prayer, the priest
would say, “Let us also pray for the perfidious Jews.” At which
nobody bowed. Against this practice, perpetuating religious
anti-Semitism, my father protested every year. On that one
day of the year, also, he did not smoke; as a passionate smoker
he considered this sacrifice much greater than not eating or
drinking, in spite of the fact that he also liked good eating
and good drinking.

After he had returned to Ronsperg, my father matriculated—
at the age of thirty-eight—at the University of Prague. He
concentrated on philosophy, ancient history, and Semitic
philology; indeed, the only book that survived him was his

MY EUROPEAN FATHER 29

Study of anti-Semitism which I re-edited many years later.
My father numbered no Jews among his ancestors and none
among his close friends. Yet this fair and broad-minded man
was irresistibly drawn to the problem of anti-Semitism, and
obtained his degree of doctor of philosophy by his book
on The Essence of Anti-Semitismf which analyses, from wide
knowledge based on literature and personal research in four
continents, the history, elements, and consequences of anti-
Semitism, and proves that ‘Semitic’ or ‘Aryan’ races do not
exist and that for two thousand years anti-Judaism had been
nothing but the result of religious fanaticism and intolerance.
He praises the extraordinary and incomparable heroism the
Jews have demonstrated in this long series of persecutions, and
sets forth a two-fold solution of the Jewish problem; settling the
Eastern Jews in a proper national home; and completing the
assimilation of the Western Jews as members of their respective
nations, without sacrifice of their traditional religion. He warned
that if Europe ignored this fair solution and if anti-Semitism con¬
tinued as an instrument of fanaticism and demagogy all Western
civilization would one day be endangered by the results.

This quiet busy life in Ronsperg was suddenly interrupted
when my mother, after the birth of her seventh child, fell
seriously ill with lung trouble. Only an immediate trip to the
south could save her. Our parents went to Arco in Southern
Tyrol and we followed them some weeks later. Hansi and I
were at once enchanted by the beautiful landscape around Lake
Garda, and by the southern climate which was strange and
new to us. But soon we found the dull green of the olive trees
dusty, and began to be very homesick for our northern forests.

After a few months our mother had got over the worst attack.
We all moved to the Black Forest and lived there for a winter.
There mother recovered sufficiently for us all to be able to
return home and to resume our old life in Ronsperg.

But the illness of his beloved Mitsu and life in sanatoria
amongst the sick had made a profound impression on my

* Published in English under the title Anti-Semitism Throughout the Ages in 1935
by Hutchinson & Co., London.

30 AN IDEA CONQ,UERS THE WORLD

father. Like Schopenhauer, he had always considered this world
as a vale of tears. Now his mind was preoccupied with the
problem of overcoming suffering by will-power, by asceticism.

He began to write a large work which would have taken
years to complete.

This work he considered as the essence of his life; it was to
be named The Realm of Abnegation^ and was to deal with the
common element of all religions, in Europe, Asia, Africa, and
pre-Spanish America. He followed closely the basic conceptions
of Schopenhauer and believed that those who had overcome
the egoistic will within themselves were able to produce miracles
by dominating forces of nature; that abnegation was the only
road to salvation.

For this work my father had studied the lives of saints of all
religions, nations, and times, and had recognized their striking
similarity. And while he studied the problem of sainthood, his
character turned always more toward this ideal. All his nature
and instincts were heroic, and his natural religion was hero wor¬
ship. Now the influence of Oriental thought had become in¬
creasingly strong and directed him toward that ideal of the saint.

In the last years of his life, when he visited a town, he paid
at least one visit to the home for incurables, to speak with
them, encourage them, and, so far as he could, to help. A Polish
ambassador who had been his friend told me that, when he
met my father for the last time in Munich, they dined at one
of the big hotels, and soon became aware that their waiter was
inattentive; but instead of complaining my father asked what
took his mind off his service. The waiter answered that his
mother was very ill. After verifying the matter my father sent
her medicines and money.

In April 1906 my father completed his last pamphlet on the
main problems of Catholicism and Protestantism. This pam¬
phlet was written as a chapter of The Realm of Abnegation. In the
preface to this pamphlet he gives a sketch of his life in Ronsperg:

Although I am now an old boy, not very far from my fiftieth birth¬
day, I have remained what I always have been—a student. Only

MY EUROPEAN FATHER

3

four years ago I passed my thirty-fourth examination, although I
had meanwhile served the State eleven years, had myself partly
instructed my children and personally administered large estates in
Bohemia and in Hungary. But I always have studied and shall do
so as long as I live. Dependent on nobody, blessed with earthly
goods—nay, overwhelmed with them—I am able to indulge in
the pleasure of literary activity for the sole purpose of serving the
truth. I consider myself a servant of those who seek the truth with
unbiased and unprejudiced minds.

One month later, on nth May 1906, my uncle Richard
Coudcnhove and his bride stopped at Ronsperg for a short visit.
The couple had just been married and were on their way to
Africa, where my uncle expected to visit his brother and do
some lion-shooting himself.

They arrived on a Friday and spent three gay days with us.
Sunday evening the belated wedding celebration came to a
climax with a big dinner, a great deal of animated conversation,
laughter, and music. I had rarely seen my father so happy. He
sang Wagner; his laughter reverberated from the castle walls.
For long weeks the echo of his voice re-cchoed in my ears.

Next morning at six Hans and I were summoned urgently
to his room. We scrambled across the hall half asleep. Every¬
body else seemed to be there already. Frightened, we stopped
on the threshold until somebody took us by the hand and led us
up to his bed. He lay there motionless, his face very white.
I saw my mother kneeling at the foot of the bed; next to her
stood my uncle and his bride, both very pale and serious. I
saw that many of the servants were quietly weeping.

That morning he had risen at five and made his usual run
through the park, but on his return had felt the pains that
presaged a heart attack.

‘Shall I awaken the Countess?’ asked the valet.

‘No, don’t disturb her.’

‘ Shall I fetch the doctor? ’

‘No, the priest.’

When the priest arrived Heinrich Coudcnhove could no longer
speak. His last gesture was to kiss the little trinket he had always
worn around his neck. It contained a lock of his mother’s hair.

32 AN IDEA CONQ.UERS THE WORLD

Babik burned my father’s papers later in the day. He had
built a huge fire in the courtyard and the flames consumed the
record of a lifetime—forty volumes of diary covering forty
years of action and thought, of passion and meditation, tragedy
and comedy. My father started this diary at seven, taking time
every day in order to add a few pages to thb mirror and con¬
fession of his searching soul. He did not wish to mar the record
by any side glances at posthumous fame. He decreed that
Babik was to burn it immediately after his death. No one had
ever seen it, not even his wife. He kept it in the safe with his
most treasured papers. As the flames grew smaller my father’s
whole life seemed to dwindle down to a bit of ashes. All that
was left would be a fleeting memory, I thought, growing
dimmer through the years. I did not know then that it is the
living that are lost to us so often. The dead stay with us always.
For, strangely enough, the profound influence of my father on
my further evolution was partly due to his early death. I
remember his saying to me with regard to his feelings toward
his own father: ‘Every son has four phases in his attitude
towards his father. First, when he is very young, he considers
his father a half-god; but he soon discovers that his father has
quite a number of faults and is very far from being perfect;
the third phase can usually be summed up in the statement
that father is an old-fashioned idiot and does not understand his
modern children; and only after many years, when father is old
or dead, a fourth judgment rectifies this harsh statement, ack¬
nowledging that father was, or is, after all, quite a fine fellow.’

This natural evolution had been interrupted by my father’s
early death. Because I had not had enough of my father I
missed him all my life and never overcame my regret at losing
him too soon. In the depth of my heart I wished to continue
his fragmentary life and to complete it as well as I could. At
every major decision I asked myself what he might have said
or done, and I learned to identify myself with him, as if a part
of his soul had penetrated my own. 'Thus my father’s influence
on my education and evolution became even stronger after his
death than it had been before.

CHAPTER IV

MY JAPANESE MOTHER

When my father’s will was read it revealed that, while our
eldest brother was the heir of Ronsperg, the rest of our father’s
property was to go to our mother, who would have custody
of her children. This my father’s family considered testimony
to the eccentric love my father had for his wife; they could not
conceive of the family fortune and the education of the children
being placed in the hands of a woman who knew nothing of
European business nor of European pedagogy. Their chief
fear was that our mother would one day embark with her
children for Japan, or that she would fall in love with some
unworthy man who would squander away her fortune. So they
tried to convince her that she should renounce the custody of
her children and accept some control over her fortune.

But to everyone’s surprise my mother, who had until now
lived like an eighth child in her home, refused. Not for a
moment would she think of giving up her children. She took
up the challenge and fought for her rights. Engaging the best
lawyers she won her case in the courts, and during this struggle
for her children her character seemed to change completely.
Although she still looked like a girl, graceful and charming,
she suddenly manifested a will of iron and a strong mind.
Conferring for hours with lawyers, bookkeepers, businessmen
and bankers, her will-power and natural intelligence first
astonished them and finally compelled them to admire this
strange and incomprehensible young woman who administered
the estates as well as her dead husband had done and brought
up her seven children not as Japanese but, according to her
husband’s will, as good Austrians, Catholics, and Europeans.

Nothing in my mother’s early years in Ronsperg had pre¬
pared us for these hidden depths. We had loved her greatly,
it is true, but much as one loves a gentle being, one too good for

34 an idea conq,uers the world

this earth. We loved our mother more than we ever loved our
father, for while he personified the principle of justice, she was
the principle of mercy. We would have much preferred to make
him angry than to make her sad.

One main reason for our love was certainly her beauty. The
aesthetic instinct is strong in every child, much stronger and
also more natural than the moral instincts, in spite of the fact
that these moral instincts arc backed by education, while the
aesthetic instincts are usually suppressed or at least neglected.
Beauty opens the heart of a child as the sun opens the blossom
of a flower, so we loved and were proud of our mother’s beauty,
and she seemed to us the most wonderful creature on earth.

It was not only our mother’s physical beauty that impressed
us, but her enigmatic charm as well, so utterly different was
it from everything else we knew. Two long knots, each thicker
than an arm, crowned her little head. To relieve this pressure,
I remember her sitting for hours and hours at her dressing-
table, her hair being brushed by her maid, while she inde-
fatigably polished her beautiful nails, which she loved as other
women love their jewels. My mother could be merry and gay,
and like a child she seemed to forget all sorrow when she could
laugh at a good joke.

Within the decade between her twentieth and thirtieth years
my mother gave birth to seven bright, lively, and healthy
children, four boys and three girls. After the birth of her seventh
child she weighed no more than a hundred pounds and could
still span her waist with her two hands.

During these years in Ronsperg my mother lived in the castle
more like a child than like a mother, learning English, German,
and French, mathematics, history, and geography, like a school¬
girl, Brought up in the old Japanese tradition, she had to be
completely re-educated in Europe, learning to sit, to move, to
eat, to speak, and to live like a European. She told us later
how disgusted she felt when she ate in a Western restaurant
for the first time and had to use forks and spoons which some
minutes before had been withdrawn from other people’s
mouths. She was especially attracted to Greek mythology.

MY JAPANESE MOTHER 35

which reminded her of the mythology she had learned in her
childhood. She wrote Japanese poetry and loved painting—
all her pictures are strong and characteristic, entirely different
from European pictures. Her artistic strain was much stronger
than that of my father who, beside his love for music, had little
interest in art. My mother loved beauty in all its forms; but
her main instrument for cherishing beauty were her eyes, not
her ears—a disposition that I have inherited.

My father not only loved but adored his Japanese wife;
while she admired, respected, obeyed, and was fond of him.
In some respects she considered him a father, in others a child.
But during all these years of wifehood her soul was devoured
by homesickness, by nostalgia for her lost country. Lying on
her sofa she dreamed with open eyes of her home in Tokyo,
her dear parents, and the woods and temples of the beautiful
province of Sana, where her family had lived for centuries.
She dreamed of a world where everyone spoke Japanese, and
in those moments she must have felt like a prisoner, with all
the wealth that surrounded her a heavy golden chain, binding
her to this cold continent of Europe, to this curious husband
she never could understand, to these children with whom she
could not even speak the language of her heart. The thick
walls of her castle must have seemed to her like prison walls,
as she dreamed of the paper screens of her Japanese home,
which were pushed away when the sun shone over her garden.

My mother seldom wore her Japanese costumes, but we
were delighted each time she did so, for then she looked like
one of our dear Japanese dolls in their little wooden boxes
under glass covers. We often watched her sitting on the carpet
of her room, writing, with her indian-ink brush, long, long letters
to her distant parents about the miraculous life she was lead¬
ing in the far West. Each letter was written on endless paper
rolls and posted in a wooden box. She explained to us the
pictures in the Japanese books we frequently received from
our grandparents—stories of the peach-born hero Momotaro,
of the fox Kitsune and the badger Tanuki, transformed into
human beings, of gods and nymphs and ghosts and souls, of all

36 AN IDEA CONQ,UERS THE WORLD

this Strange world where human life is interwoven in a greater
pattern of beasts and trees and flowers and stars.

She was animated by an extreme sense of duty and of
honour. She admired my father without understanding him;
her womanly instinct told her that he was an extraordinary
human being; but she also knew well that she had much more
common sense than he had. I am sure that she never under¬
stood why he married her instead of taking for a wife one of
the beautiful Western girls with golden hair, the beauty of
which she never ceased to admire.

She never shared her husband’s intellectual life, since she
was not interested in philosophy, nor in religion, history,
politics or business. While my father lived, she had nothing
to do with the administration of our estate, and even our
household was virtually run by father, although she dis¬
cussed the menu of the day every morning with our cook. Our
education and upbringing naturally lay in father’s hands,
although he discussed all these questions with mother and
often accepted her reasonable advice.

In fact, my parents had, beside each other and their chil¬
dren, no common interests. They dreamed different dreams in
different worlds, as distant from each other as the moon from
Sirius. She could neither understand nor appreciate his books,
preferring Japanese and especially English novels which she
read constantly, fascinated by these curious Western love
stories with their accounts of free and bold Western women who
gave their hearts and lives to men of their own choice and
dared to live and to love beyond the strict limits of morals,
tradition, and convention. Certainly she envied these women
in the depth of her heart and compared them to the Japanese
women, who had to remain all their lives the slaves and tools
of men. My father, on the contrary, never touched a novel
and did not like us to read them, for he believed that they
painted life as it was not and that they might nourish our
imagination with false illusions.

I do not know whether my father or my mother was the

MY JAPANESE MOTHER 37

more responsible for the total lack of intellectual communion
between them. Had my father attempted to interest his wife in
his books and ideas he might perhaps have succeeded, but he
never made that attempt, for he, too, had rather an Oriental
conception of relations between the sexes and disliked profoundly
the notion of emancipated women. The mere idea that his
wife might have tried to influence the current of his philo¬
sophical speculations would have driven him mad. He wished
to combine the advantages of celibacy with those of marriage,
so he remained all his life an intellectual bachelor. Nobody
was allowed to influence his ideas, and had my mother ever
tried to do so, their marriage would soon have proved impossible.
My father was always reluctant to force my mother to give up
her childlike life by involving her in unnecessary and com¬
plicated problems. He was well aware that he had complicated
her life enough.

This lack of intellectual contact, together with a strong
emotional attraction, was one of the reasons for the admirable
and harmonious relations between my parents. Children arc
keen observers, and we watched our parents closely. We could
never see the slightest tension between them, never the shadow
of a conflict or dissension. Their harmony seemed perfect.
They treated each other with the utmost attention, love, kind¬
ness, and regard. We never heard a harsh word between them
or saw an unfriendly glance or gesture. They gave the impres¬
sion of being eternal lovers, each aiming primarily at the
happiness of the other.

But, in spite of this harmony, my mother was virtually a
prisoner; without relatives, friends, or fortune, she felt herself
completely at her husband’s mercy, a slave in the house where
she was mistress, my father’s queen and slave at the same
time. The cage in which she lived was golden—but neverthe¬
less it was a cage. Jealousy was one of the strongest elements
in my father’s character, and jealousy was certainly one of the
reasons for his seclusion in his lonely castle. His fortune would
easily have permitted him to spend part of each year in Vienna
or in Paris, but he was convinced that my mother was the

38 AN IDEA CONQUERS THE WORLD

jewel of womanhood and that every man was bound to fall
blindly in love with her just as he had. He was haunted by the
fear that one day she might reciprocate such a love and smash
the harmony of his family and his life. But his fairness impelled
him to be just as jealous for her as he was for himself. When
he once saw that my brother and I loved our charming young
English governess, he threatened to dismiss her instantly if
we gave the impression of loving her more than our mother.
For we must love our mother more than any other human
being in the world, until the day came when a wife would take
this privileged place in our hearts.

My father, aware of my mother’s profound nostalgia, cer¬
tainly feared that this feeling might one day overwhelm her
love for him and her children and that she would try to get
home to Japan. Several times he planned to make a short
trip to Tokyo with her to visit her parents, but always a new
baby forced them to postpone this journey. It was difficult for
my old grandparents to visit Europe, because they spoke only
Japanese; so my mother, trained in Asiatic self-control and
sacrifice, continued to suffer from never-ceasing nostalgia, to
hide the tears of her heart behind the smiles of her lips, to do her
duty toward her husband and her children, and to accept her
destiny humbly.

The sudden change in my mother’s character after my
father’s death was accentuated by her Japanese background;
indeed it might be compared to the transformation of her native
land during the second half of the last century which turned
Japan from an Oriental land of dreams into an imperialistic
world power—from the most peaceful into the most aggressive
nation on earth.

On the practical side it had drawbacks. My mother’s nature
grew more and more despotic, distrustful, too, even of her own
immediate environment. Children, servants, and employees
grew to fear her and rushed to satisfy her wishes. She was
particularly severe toward her daughters, for she believed that
a girl ought to be taught complete self-control and obedience.

MY JAPANESE MOTHER

39

She disliked signs of weakness or lack of discipline in any of us.
Our father had never allowed us to admit fear or fatigue, but
our mother, once she could make her mind felt, showed a
far deeper contempt for cowardice or weakness than even he
had known.

I have often asked myself how a change as radical as hers
was possible, and found the following explanation. An indi¬
vidual character is far from being a homogeneous unit. It is a
composite being which may be compared to a parliament where
many individuals and factions strive for power but end by
expressing the will of the maj’ority. The human character too
is split into divergent factions ruled by impulses that originate
in various individual and background elements. These factions,
like those of a parliament, are held in check by a majority will
which remains in charge as long as conditions are normal.
However, a shock or an important event may call into play
certain minor aspects which under the stress of the moment
assume a major role. The former majority then becomes a
minority with the former ‘opposition’ taking full charge. The
character seems changed only because its elements have
changed their roles.

For twenty years our mother led this active life. After her
youngest son Eri had come of age, and she was free from the
responsibility of custody over her children, a new chapter and
a new turn in her life began.

The duties which fate had laid upon her had been per¬
formed. Now she withdrew from the world without grudge or
bitterness. She lived for many years in her villa at Modling,
near Vienna, having as her sole companion her daughter Olga,
who remained by her side with Oriental filial piety until the
end.

For years she had had to play on the stage of life the most
diversified roles: that of submissive daughter, faithful wife, lov¬
ing mother and great lady; she had been a Buddhist and a
Christian, a Japanese and an Austrian. Now she had done with
all this comedy. From now on, her one desire was to be nothing
but herself. She asked nothing more than to be left in peace

40 AN IDEA CONQ,UERS THE WORLD

by everyone. Basically, her many European friends, both men
and women, had remained foreign to her, and in relation to
her own children she was like a hen who had hatched ducklings
and was now astonished at seeing her young swimming off
without her being able to follow them.

The one strong abiding sentiment to which she remained
true was her love for Japan. Whereas she found any number
of pretexts to avoid seeing her European friends and relatives,
it was her last great satisfaction to be received by the brother
of the Emperor of Japan and his wife when they visited Vienna
on their world tour. She remained in constant touch with
Japanese diplomats, read many Japanese books and news¬
papers, and listened to Japanese songs on her gramophone.
She had finally given up her plans for a trip to Japan, after
the death of her parents. She realized that Japan, like herself,
had changed fundamentally, and that she would only meet
disillusionment by seeing it again.

Each time I visited her in Modling, she was pleased at my
success with Pan-Europe—^but only because it concerned me
personally. She would have been just as happy if I had become
a tennis-champion. The fate of Europe was a matter of indiffer¬
ence to her. She was happier when she read a short news item
about me in a Japanese paper than the most flattering leader
in a prominent European newspaper.

Although she had become a practising Christian, her heart
had remained Buddhist. Her inner poise was so great that the
universe could have collapsed about her without disturbing
that poise. She had been for long years active out of a sense of
duty. Now she had had enough of all this need for reflexion,
negotiating, planning and worry.

So, far from Japan, but also at heart far from Europe, she
lived her own contemplative, flowerlike existence—ever smiling
and ever dreaming.

CHAPTER V

IMPERIAL VIENNA

Slowly we settled back into our routine of study and play.
Mother, as I said, was very intelligent and practical, anything
but intellectual. Wc missed father’s conversations about the
past and future of the human race, about philosophies and poli¬
tics and current events. The door to the world of ideas seemed
closed and all intellectual stimulation stopped. Then all of a
sudden new sources of inspiration opened up.

I had never been a great reader, but after my father’s death
I overcame my aversion to ‘book knowledge’ and steeped
myself in the literature of the world. My father’s library had
remained untouched, and here Hans and I spent most of our
free time now, climbing zealously up and down the library
ladders, in breathless quest for more knowledge. Day after day
I sat on the floor surrounded by volumes on the life of Buddha
and the teachings of Confucius, while Hans was tracking down
information on art and literature. I think that in the years that
followed I read as much as is humanly possible, storing up
intellectual capital for years to come.

I was thirteen when the question came up as to what boys’
school I should attend. My mother, more than anyone of us,
was conscious that our quiet and cloistered life of learning
could not continue. I understood and approved her argument,
but did not find it more attractive for that reason. I hated to
leave Ronsperg, and the prospect of living among a large
number of unknown boys was very unpleasant to me.

We were first sent for a year to Brixen, a lovely Alpine town
in Southern Tyrol. There we studied at the public high-school.
Our tutor accompanied us. We lived under the care of the
former Hungarian companion of my mother who had married a
friend of my father. Count Erwin Wurmbrand. Both were
spiritualists. In that year we learned a great deal about the
things between heaven and earth: of horoscopes and spiritualist

42 AN IDEA CONQ,UERS THE WORLD

seances, of clairvoyance and ghosts, of mediumism and
prophecy, of hand-reading and graphology. A new world
seemed to open up before us.

Soon mother became dissatisfied with our stay in Brixen.
She did not wish us to grow up like provincials in that pictur¬
esque spot in Tyrol. We ought to establish connections for our
future. So she decided to send us to the foremost college of
Austria, the Theresianum Academy in Vienna.

The Theresianum was to the old Austrian empire what Eton
is to Britain. Founded by the Empress Maria Theresa, and
housed in the old palace of her father Charles VI, it had only
one aim; to perpetuate within its pupils the traditional ideals
of the Austrian monarchy. Many leading statesmen had been
trained here; in my time nearly all students were members of
the titled nobility and many of them were sons of famous pupils,
getting their instruction from the same teachers who had
taught their fathers.

From a purely pedagogical point of view the Theresianum
was quite satbfactory. The boys more or less disciplined them¬
selves. Every group of boys had a ‘prefect’, but he was only
a supervisor who had to enforce house regulations and see to
it that students got up on time, followed the school schedule
and kept order. He had no moral control over the students,
nor did he make an attempt to form their characters. The boys
did their own educating, watched one another eagerly so that
the two unwritten laws should not be broken—fair behaviour
and a sense of solidarity—and I would say that the system
worked. The majority of the students who were to graduate from
the Academy became decent and honourable men—successful
ones, too, in whatever career they had chosen.

Sundays saw us off on a few hours’ furlough to Vienna, where
we paraded our handsome uniforms with pride: dark blue
jacket with shining brass buttons, high red collar with gold
piping, grey trousers, and a stiff black cap—the latter an
exact copy of the regulation caps of our army officers. What
thrilled us most was our sword—a slender bit of steel sheathed
in black leather.

IMPERIAL VIENNA

43

Like all the other students of the Theresianum, my brother
and I led a double life; on weekdays we were naughty boys
in their teens making life a misery for prefects and teachers
alike, and on Sundays we moved like young gentlemen in
Vienna’s most exclusive society.

My mother had taken an apartment in Vienna. She was
still as graceful as a young girl and went out a great deal. The
Viennese nobility, who had always had a taste for the foreign
and exotic, received her with open arms and made much fuss of
her. She liked to be seen with her sons, who by this time
towered above her.

In his preface to my book The Totalitarian State Against Man,
Wickham Steed describes my mother at that time:

Some thirty years ago I met in the drawing-room of an old Viennese
palace a Japanese lady who was the widow of an Austro-Hungarian
diplomatist, the late Count Heinrich Coudenhove-Kalergi. Her
husband had been Austro-Hungarian Charge d’Affaires in Tokyo;
and her charm made it easy to understand that difference of race
should not have seemed to him an unsuperable obstacle to their
union.

A few years later I overtook, in a street of the Austrian capital,
two well-groomed boys wearing the uniform of the famous
Theresianum Academy. They were accompanied by a lady who
looked as though she might be their elder sister. As I passed them,
this lady. Countess Coudenhove-Kalergi, turned and presented to
me her sons, of whom the elder. Count Richard, is the author of this
book.

Whatever objections I might have had in the first place to
losing my ‘privacy’ among a lot of strange boys, this group life
which forced me to adjust myself to a number of varied
characten and temperaments did me much good and in a way
proved more important to me than all my Latin and Greek.
Taken together, my fellow students represented a very inter¬
national bundle of reactions, resentments, prejudices, emotions,
instincts, and ideals which was in no way different from that
of any other international group of human beings elsewhere
in the world and gave me an excellent chance of studying
human nature at first hand and not from books. We had boys

44 an idea conq,uers the world

from all over Europe and some from Asia. There was a nor¬
mal amount of strife, of course, but no more than if we had
come from the same country. We formed no national groups,
and friendships were based on sympathies and common in¬
terests. On the whole, life at the Theresianum reaffirmed what
life at Ronsperg had taught me—nationalism was not a prob¬
lem of blood or race but of education. I was delighted when
I found in the library a quotation from Confucius which said:
‘There are no racial antagonisms among reallyeducated people.’

I am afraid that intellectually the Theresianum made no
particular inroads on my ways of thinking. My sedentary
habits continued. I would rather sit at my desk and read than
be out fencing or riding with my fellow students. The things
that stirred me in Ronsperg stirred me now: the moral powers
that determine our lives. What are they? Where do they come
from? Whence hails the secret dynamism which has animated
the religions and philosophies of the world ?

I read the Indian and Greek philosophers; I steeped myself
in the Stoics, particularly Seneca, and from there turned to
the scholastics, then to the modern philosophers: Descartes,
Bacon, Kant, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche.

During the last years at the Theresianum, I had written a
book: Objectivity as the Basic Principle of Ethics. This book later
became my thesis for my doctor’s degree. Its basic argument
was that objective concepts were moral, and that subjective
concepts were immoral. This principle held good both for the
dimension of space and for that of time. ‘Now’ in the time
dimension is the equivalent of ‘ I ’ in space. In social ethics,
the ‘I’ view should be replaced by ‘we’ in individual ethics,
and the ‘ now ’ view, by a conception which places future and
past on the same level as the present. My studies of the Stoics
had led me to reject one-sided social ethics, and to measure
one’s behaviour in relation to one’s own life with the same
yard-stick as that used in relationship to one’s fellow men.

After graduation, I registered at the Vienna University for
courses in philosophy and modern history. I never considered
history as study, but as recreation. I seldom read novels, but

IMPERIAL VIENNA 45

much history and biography. World history appealed to me
as the most fascinating novel of all—written not by man,
but by God himself. More fantastic than any novel, it is a
series of miracles, wonders and dramas. Therefore since time
immemorial, all great dramatists have endeavoured to drama¬
tize sections of that great novel, and have been inspired by it.
History is also a means of escaping from the narrow present
into distant periods and lands, and of meeting great men and
women who have long been dead.

When in July 1913 the doors of the Theresianum closed
behind me, I felt free and happy: a junior member of Vienna’s
aristocratic society.

This society lived in a style of luxury and gaiety that had
seldom before been equalled, and Vienna rivalled Paris and
London as a centre of Western civilization, as befitted the
capital of a country which was, after Russia, the largest
in Europe. From Mozart and Beethoven an unbroken chain
of great musicians led to Brahms and Gustav Mahler to
make Vienna the world centre of music—and to typify the
gay spirit of the city and its life there were the Strauss waltzes
which one heard everywhere.

Music is the very soul of Vienna. When Goethe called archi¬
tecture ‘frozen music’, he might have thought of Vienna with
its lofty churches and palaces built in the half Italian Baroque
style—seeming to link an aristocratic earth with beautiful
cloud-lines to a Catholic heaven.

Musical, too, is the lovely rhythm of mountains and woods,
of vineyards and meadows surrounding Vienna with an inde¬
scribable charm. Music was the soul not only of the aristocratic
society of this imperial city with its unique opera and concerts,
its operettas and orchestras. The entire population grew up
in an atmosphere of music, of art and of beauty. After a week
of hard labour one saw on bright Sunday evenings in spring
good-looking young girls and boys of the working class coming
home from long walks through the neighbouring woods and
meadows, carrying bunches of flowers, singing gay songs
with clear voices, and walking with the rhythm of dancers.

46 AN IDEA CONQUERS THE WORLD

And when the summer nights fell, all the little inn gardens
in the charming suburbs of Vienna were crowded with lovers,
drinking young white wine, singing, joking, and laughing. . . .

Vienna’s intellectual life had its centre in the numerous
coffee-houses where, behind clouds of smoke, social, political,
religious, and philosophical issues were discussed during long
winter evenings and nights, between tables of gamblers and of
chess players. Life was easy indeed in imperial Vienna; at
least it was taken easily. For the average Viennese was kind,
good-natured, and gentle. ‘Live and let live!’ was the motto
of his life. It meant that he wished to be left in peace, as he
wanted to leave the rest of the world in peace. His attitude was
more contemplative than active, more inclined toward plea¬
sure than toward heroism, more toward art than toward science.

Vienna’s artistic life culminated in two imperial institu¬
tions, the Opera and the Burgtheatre. On them the Emperor
spent millions, with the result that for generations they
represented the best opera and the first theatre in the world.
Their stars received higher salaries than the highest officials
of the empire and enjoyed an incomparable popularity.

When I was at the Theresianum, we were regularly sent to
attend performances at the Opera and the Burgtheatre. These
classical performances were considered an important element
of education, and indeed, the tragedies of Shakespeare and of
Schiller had a deep influence on my moral evolution.

Between the society of imperial Vienna and French society
before the Revolution there was a great resemblance. Here was
great culture linked to decadence and frivolity; a society that
would not face, but only postpone, decisions; an upper class
which considered life a comedy to be acted out against a back¬
ground of luxury and indulgence, a class which shut its eyes
to social problems and spent its energies on love and gossip,
gambling and racing, art and amusement. There were excep¬
tions among them, just as my father was an exception. But such
men and women remained away from Vienna, working off
their disgust in the affairs of their country estates.

This arrogant society had its virtues, of course: hospitality,

IMPERIAL VIENNA 47

generosity, and a keen sense of honour, fairness, and loyalty.
What sport and racing were for the English aristocracy, art was
to the Viennese, who were proud of their artistic and cultural
background and worshipped all genuine artists. Great musicians,
painters, actors, and singers had social positions superior to
those of millionaires, and Viennese society was proud to
have them as its guests of honour. An accomplished artist was
always considered an aristocrat and a peer.

And beneath this surface frivolity there was serious activity,
for those who would look for it. Trotsky, Masaryk, and Josef
Pilsudski had lived in Vienna; from all parts of the world men
and women came to Vienna’s medical schools, to consult the
great doctors and surgeons there; and from Vienna the theories
of Sigmund Freud had begun to influence the minds of those
the world over who pondered the problem of human nature.
Zionism had started from Vienna, under the leadership of a
brilliant Austrian journalist, Theodor Herzl.

On graduation from the Theresianum Academy, I found
myself in yet a third kind of cosmopolitan society—imperial
Vienna. Though I did not often join in the constant round of
balls and operettas that immediately engaged the attention of the
others who graduated—my father’s teachings had broadened
my horizons too much for that—I nevertheless became suffi-
ciendy familiar with Viennese society and its foundations to
know that Vienna was unique in Europe. While all other great
cities of the Continent were national centres, Vienna alone was
international, capital of the only international empire. This
vast empire had a population of fifty-five millions, split into
nineteen different nationalities. But together they formed a
natural geographic and economic unit. It was a beautiful coun¬
try, from the plains of Hungary and Bohemia to the Alps and
the Carpathians; from the woods of Transylvania to the coasts
and islands of Dalmatia. But this empire, with all its natural
resources, which might have made its inhabitants wealthy and
happy, suffered from a mortal disease—nationalism. Their old
loyalty to the Hapsburg crown had been overshadowed by the

48 AN IDEA CONQ,UERS THE WORLD

new creed that each people had the right to form its own
sovereign nation. The young generation was growing up
in mounting opposition to Vienna. And Vienna hardly reacted
against this dangerous movement, either by reforms or by sup¬
pression. Emperor Franz Joseph, who had reigned since 1848,
was old and tired, opposed to any dangerous and radical reform
that might have changed the constitution of his empire. This
constitution had been based since 1867 on dualism, which
meant that the empire consisted of two equal and sovereign
parts, of Austria and of Hungary, linked by a common military,
foreign, economic, and monetary policy. It was understood
that in Austria the Germanic element was predominant, in
Hungary, the Magyars. Yet neither Germans nor Magyars
formed the majority of the Austro-Hungarian population, but
the Slavs with their different branches: Czechs and Slovaks,
Croatians, Serbs and Slovenians, Poles and Ukrainians. Natur¬
ally these Slavs, like the Roumanians in Transylvania and the
Italians in the Southern Tyrol, desired to break German-
Magyar supremacy and to transform Austria-Hungary into a
federation of equal national groups.

Viennese society centred on a dynasty of international origin
and an aristocracy which merged all branches of blood and
civilization. Both army and bureaucracy were equally mixed,
and were united only by common tradition and common loyalty
to the old Emperor Franz Joseph. This cosmopolitan and poly¬
glot Austro-Hungarian Empire was an anomaly and anach¬
ronism in a Europe that had for a century grown more and more
nationalistic, and it was inevitable that nationalistic movements
found their way to Austria and even now were working
to dismember the empire into national units by war, revolu¬
tion, or reform. But the government of Vienna, determined to
remain supranational and to fight the nationalist aspirations
of its citizens, would not yield to these currents.

Vienna, I noticed, was definitely international only at its top
and at its base. Its society not only consisted of its cosmo¬
politan aristocracy, but also of the refined Jewish intelligentsia

IMPERIAL VIENNA 49

with international education and outlook which played a
leading part in arts and science, literature and journalism,
theatre and sport, finance, commerce, and industry. On the
other hand, the industrial population of Vienna also thought
in international terms, not only because of the permanent
influx of different nationalities from all parts of the vast empire,
but because the great majority of them had become submerged
in the Social Democratic Party, which had an international
outlook.

Between these two international elements the Viennese
middle classes were an ideal hunting ground for nationalism.
German nationalism was inspired by Austrians coming from
Bohemia, by ‘Sudeten’, accustomed to regard their struggle
against the Czechs as the greatest political issue and the noblest
task in the world. This Sudeten nationalism, which one genera¬
tion later led to the Munich tragedy, was paralleled by an
equally fanatic movement of Czech nationalism and by other
nationalist movements throughout the empire.

Of all these, the German nationalists were the most aggres¬
sive. They were pan-Germans, all of them—forerunners of a
mighty movement to come—and their admiration for Bis¬
marck’s Reich was only surpassed in later years by their devo¬
tion to the Reich of another leader. These Germans in 1913
advocated the dismemberment of Austria, followed by the
Anschluss of all its German-speaking provinces, or the
hegemony of Austrian pan-Germans over the entire mon¬
archy, with the help of their German brothers beyond the
north-western borders. But whatever ends it was seeking, this
pan-Germanism was closely linked with anti-Semitism, for
these fanatical Germans considered the Jews the pioneers of
internationalism and consequently their worst enemies.

Three men were representative of this anti-Semitic move¬
ment—three men who are not important in themselves but who
rise to mammoth importance because of the influence of their
ideologies on a then obscure young Austrian, Adolf Hitler,
to whom Vienna had meant the bitterness of misery and
humiliation. Carl Lueger was the first of these men; Lueger,

50 AN IDEA CONQ,UERS THE WORLD

leader of the Austrian Christian Socialists and Mayor of
Vienna, a great orator who used anti-Semitism to stir up the
envies and jealousies of the middle classes against Jewish com¬
petition. The other two were Von Schocnerer, leader of
the pan-Germans, and the renegade Englishman, Houston
Stewart Chamberlain.

Von Schoenerer, a member of parliament like Lueger, was
an exponent of a racial theory which combined brutal anti-
Semitism with narrow-minded pan-Germanism. Perhaps
because of the brutality of his ideas Schoenerer, never gained
great influence in Austrian politics, but twenty years later it
became plain that some of his listeners—and one especially—
had listened seriously and learned.

Of these three, the Englishman, Chamberlain, had the most
influence on events to come, for he was no politician like
Lueger and Schoenerer, but a scholar and author. While the
latter were inciting crowds with words, Chamberlain was writ¬
ing a best-seller which further poisoned the minds of those half-
educated millions who formed audiences for Lueger and
others like him. Not anti-Semitism, but worship of his own
Nordic race motivated Houston Stewart Chamberlain. He had
nothing in common with the vulgar anti-Semites who borrowed
his theories, but believed, rather, that England had failed in
its racial mission and should be displaced by Germany as the
leading nation on the globe. In this conception of race he
was a disciple of another non-German prophet of Germanism,
the French Count de Gobineau, who may be considered the
real ‘discoverer’ of the racial idea and theory. Houston
Stewart Chamberlain married a daughter of Richard Wagner;
Gobineau was a great friend of Wagner, who thus has the
dubious distinction of being a link in this chain of pre-Hitlerite
Nazism.

The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century, Chamberlain’s book,
which became the bible of the racial myth, undertook to inter¬
pret history from the racial point of view and tried to prove that
all the great accomplishments of history were due to a superior
race of ‘ Aryans ’, a heroic and genial race currently represented

IMPERIAL VIENNA 5 I

by the Germans. By a combination of vision with total lack of
critical sense, Chamberlain created a book which flattered every
German and appealed enormously to the vanity of the nation
as a whole. For this he became famous throughout Germany
and Austria and was honoured by the Kaiser, who was much
influenced by his ideas. Needless to say, the book also had a
decisive influence on a whole generation of young Germans
and inspired the entire Nazi literature, from Hitler to Rosen¬
berg.

Hitler, too, was in Vienna, but as a silent spectator only.
Born in Braunau not far from my grandfather’s estate, Ottens-
heim, he had come to Vienna with the burning ambition to
become an artist and rise in the world. When his talents failed
him he lived the life of an unemployed outcast, cursing the
international aristocracy, the Jewish plutocracy, and the life
of ease, tolerance, and humour around him. He would not
join the party of the Austrian Socialists because it was run by
a brilliant and idealistic Jew, Victor Adler, so he became a
passionate pan-Germanist, a violent anti-Semite, turning his
thoughts to Germany and Prussia, which he considered the
antipodes of Vienna. When he moved to Munich in 1912 his
education was completed. Like so many of his Austrian coun¬
trymen he already was an accomplished Nazi—made in Vienna.

Whilst the stage was set, first for war and revolution, then
for Nazism, Vienna, ignorant of its tragic future, was never
gayer, more frivolous, more extravagant, enjoying an eternal
round of balls and dinners, receptions, theatre and opera
parties, exhibitions and races. I could not escape certain social
obligations, but did not enjoy them. Vienna’s society remained
strange to me; I did not share the political and social prejudices
of the people I met; I did not gamble or smoke. After an even¬
ing in society I felt I had gained nothing, only lost a few
hours of sleep and study.

Whenever I had a free week I preferred to go home to
Ronsperg and spend my time there at our hunting box,
Dianahof. Hans and I always found a group of old friends
there—the foresters and gamekeepers of the estate, simple.

52 AN IDEA CONQ,UERS THE WORLD

Straightforward men, who had a good deal of natural intelli¬
gence and common sense. They knew how to enjoy their life
too. Many a party took place at the end of a long hunting
day. Big tables were constructed of boards and barrels in
the hall or out under the trees; vast quantities of sausages
were served with bread, butter, and cheese, and beer flowed
endlessly from great barrels. At a late hour we all burst into
song:

Deep in the Bohemian Forest
My cradle stood
It’s so long ago
Since I left this wood.

CHAPTER VI

IDA ROLAND

During the last winter in which Europe was at peace, the great
sensation in Vienna’s artistic life was the rise to fame of
a young actress whom dramatic critics and public alike
acclaimed with an enthusiasm unequalled since the days of
Eleonora Duse or Sarah Bernhardt.

This brilliant star on the theatrical firmament of Vienna
was Ida Roland. She had conquered Viennese society, and
was the daily topic in every salon.

My mother was very fond of the theatre. So one evening we
went to the German Volkstheater to sec the new star of whom
we had heard so much. She was playing The Czarina, a dra¬
matic comedy by two Hungarian authors, Lcngyel and Biro. It
centred around a palace revolution against Czarina Catherine
II and was tense with love, state action and conspiracy.

I shall never forget Ida Roland’s first appearance: through a
number of doors thrown hurriedly open by lackeys, she has¬
tened to her huge Baroque writing-desk. There she stood almost
motionless, face to the public—every inch an empress, every
inch a lovable and loving woman. Her slender figure in a wide
hoop dress seemed tall, crowned by the grace and delicacy of
her small head which gave her the proportions of a Tanagra
statuette. Behind long lashes, her half-closed eyes gazed into
the distance. After a pause she began to give out orders in an
unforgettable voice, the quality of which, like dusky velvet, was
one of the most powerful elements in the magnetism which
radiated from her personality.

We left the theatre under the spell of this incomparable
artiste.

Shortly afterwards, my mother met Ida Roland at the house
of a mutual friend. After several meetings they became friends.
Ida Roland invited my mother and my brother Hans to an

54 AN IDEA CONQUERS THE WORLD

informal supper one evening. But Hans being out of town at
Dianahof, my mother asked me to accompany her.

As arranged, we went again to the Volkstheater before the
supper to see Ida Roland in her latest role, ‘Natasha’, in a
dramatized version of Dostoyevski’s novel The Idiot. This time
she played the part of a young woman of modern times, a tor¬
mented, passionate nature, who because she was in love with
the young eccentric prince was alone able to sense the nobility
of his true character, whereas others took him to be an idiot.
The human quality of her acting was overwhelming. I was
deeply impressed, and felt instinctively that this great actress
was inspired by a great soul.

Half an hour later we met Ida Roland in the lounge of the
Grand Hotel. I had expected to sec a Grande Dame, instead
I found a sweet, childlike being of great simplicity and incom¬
parable charm, with no trace of conceit. She had a fair and
almost transparent complexion. The oval of her face with
its delicately moulded features was surmounted by an alabaster-
white forehead and temples framed in lightly waved red-
blonde hair. Her mobile expression was lit by light-blue eyes
and a full beautiful mouth with dazzling teeth. The nose was
that of a lioness or sphinx, and her hands were delicate and
most beautiful. Her profile reminded one of the Egyptian
Queen Nefertiti. From a photograph of Ida Roland taken
beside the famous bust of the Egyptian queen, one would have
taken them to be twin sisters.

I was seated beside her at table that evening. We spoke of
her roles, of Dostoyevski. To my mother’s amazement, I proved
talkative.

Five days later a highlight of the Vienna Carnival season
took place, the Volkstheater Redoute. It was not exactly a
masked ball, for the men wore evening clothes, and only the
women were disguised behind dominoes. Ida Roland and my
mother had agreed to meet at this ball. As I never went to
balls. Mother had not expected I would accompany her. She
was pleased when I offered at the last moment to go.

IDA ROLAND

55

Behind her domino, Ida Roland was unseen that evening
by her Viennese public. She had come on my account and for
me alone. My mother had met other friends. So we two, in
the midst of this bustle of Viennese society, were as happy to
have found each other as two children in the woods. We saw
nothing of the dancing couples, heard nothing of the Viennese
waltz tunes, nor the clinking of champagne glasses all round.
We walked arm in arm as in a dream.

Towards morning, I drove home with my mother, lost in the
wonder of this meeting. I was in love and knew I was loved.
Since childhood my dreams had been to find someone who was
like a twin sister, someone who was my other self, yet a woman;
someone with whom I could share my thoughts and longings:
who would understand me without words. Suddenly this dream
had come true. In these hours spent apart, yet in the midst
of the hubbub of Viennese society, I had revealed my most
intimate thoughts and dreams, and she had spoken as though
we had known each other since early childhood.

From then on, we met almost daily. When she returned
from long rehearsals to her hotel, we took drives in a horse-
drawn cab through the Prater, which was alive with child¬
hood memories for her. Then we strolled through the neigh¬
bouring meadows around Vienna, enjoying the spring together.

Days, weeks and months went past as in a dream. We met
far from Vienna, by the magnificent Traunsee in the Salz-
kammergut, and the Starnbergersee in Bavaria.

We had known for a long time that we were destined for
each other. I often thought of the allegory taken from Plato’s
Banquet that man was once a cylindrically-shaped entity with
four arms and four legs, that a god one day had split it in two,
into man and woman, and that since then each half was seeking
the other half, and could be happy only when it was found.
I thanked God and my destiny that amongst the millions of
other feminine elements, I had found my lost half.

Our life subsequently fulfilled all the promises it then held.
Our temperaments were as different as they could be, but fun¬
damentally we were akin. Our life together altered our two

56 AN IDEA CONQUERS THE WORLD

characters and adapted them to each other. Our interests lay
wide apart—I knew little of the dramatic arts, and she had not
gone much into philosophy; she had neither taste nor interest
for politics.

Still, we began to co-operate in all these fields. I accom¬
panied her on all her theatrical tours, and advised her in her
dealings with theatre managers and impresarios. I loved to
sit for hours alone in the darkened hall of a theatre, never
tired of seeing her rehearsals and watching her passionate
efforts to perfect her role. I had to tell her again and again
what I did not like about its quality. She was devoid of vanity
and self-complacency, and was her own most relendess critic.
Her love of perfection was one of her essential qualities, and
nothing was indifferent to her nor secondary. From her
managers she demanded the best co-actors and the best stage-
settings. Only the finest costumes were good enough, for
costume formed part of the mysterious magic which held her
enthralled in the acting of her parts.

This magic character of her art made her so dependent upon
reactions from the public that she would look upon the latter
as both a medium and a hypnotizer. She liked to be carried away
by their enthusiasm, emotion or hilarity. Often during a per¬
formance she would ask me to see who was sitting in, say, parquet
box number four, because she felt unsympathetic radiations
coming from there. And often she surpassed herself when she
realized that some great artist was sitting in the stalls and sensed
his approval. One day in Munich, Rainer Maria Rilke saw her
in Anne Pedersdotter, the young wife of a Norwegian pastor who
falls in love with her stepson, places a deadly curse on her husband
and finally accuses herself of witchcraft. Rilke was so shaken
that he came every evening to the theatre only to see her in one
love-scene where she and her stepson meet and come together
in an almost speechless scene. Rilke in one of his letters, pub¬
lished later, called this performance ‘one of the most potent
and satisfying impressions I have ever experienced with any
character actress’; he then mentioned ‘the vigour of her nature
which seemed to renew itself, clear as spring water, by gestures.

IDA ROLAND

57

inspiration and the mounting intensity of the action,’ This com¬
parison describes the fundamental quality of her art: a spring
fed by mysterious and vital forces.

Just as a tree adds one ring each year of its growth, so her art
developed role by role, until she impersonated the great
classical roles to perfection: Judith, Phaedra, Cleopatra, Lady
Macbeth or modern masterpieces such as Paul Claudel’s
wonderful ‘Le partage de midi’. When she played Rostand’s
L’Aiglon, she often wore at home the uniform and sword from
the first rehearsal onwards, so as to practise not only moving
about freely and naturally, but also to become identified with
the personality of the young Duke of Reichstadt.

In spite of her fame in tragic roles, they depressed her,
because she identified herself so completely with her role that
she somehow suffered all day under the tragedy she had to live
in the evening.

She therefore loved to play in comedies: to conquer the
hearts of young and old, of men and women, with her incom¬
parable smile, with the natural humour that constituted a
basic element of her personality and with the firework of her
bright and brilliant temperament. Thus she was no less success¬
ful in comedies by Somerset Maugham or by Molnar than in
Shakespeare’s tragedies. And she was happier during the time
she played them. For in spite of her unusual intelligence, her
soul had remained that of a child.

Paradoxically enough, this great actress was incapable of
dissimulation. Her expression was so completely the mirror of
her soul that every emotion or mood was at once apparent. She
was always genuine, both on the stage and in private life. She
was incapable of camouflaging her likes as dislikes, her joys as
sorrows. Nothing was more unbearable and tiring for her than
to be bored by people and situations. She was constantly
haunted by the fear of having to entertain a bore or to be com¬
pelled to sit in smoky rooms with bad air and closed windows.
She loved spring and morning; she was most herself when
roaming about in woods and meadows—far from people and
cities.

58 AN IDEA CONQ.UERS THE WORLD

In many respects, I shared her likes and dislikes. For a happy
marriage, it is not enough to agree on big things, for life
is full of trifles and even big things are like mosaics composed
of little things. It was a lucky coincidence that neither of us
smoked, played cards or hunted; that we both drank sparingly,
prefered country to town-life, loved animals and disliked large
parties.

Whenever Ida Roland prepared for a historical role, our two
spheres of interest met. We read together the best biographies
of these personalities, compared their pictures and photographs,
until the person, the milieu and the period had taken shape
in her imagination. Together we read innumerable manuscripts
of authors who wanted her to play their works, and we worked
at her roles together.

Our co-operation extended to my own literary activities
from the beginning. Her perfection in the art of speech,
rendered keener by her familiarity with literary works of world-
fame, was a valuable pointer to me in matters of style. And in
my political activities she had always been an indispensable
adviser and collaborator. Politics are based on sound human
understanding. Therefore in this sphere men and women with
common sense but without academical training are often more
successful than the greatest scholars.

Her sound human understanding has often shown me the
way out of an intricate political situation. We discussed every
important question and every crucial decision. Her instinctive
knowledge of human character, born of her strong imaginative
qualities and radar-like intuition, was an invaluable help to me.

In this way, through co-operation, our mutual spheres of
interest have expanded—I was always amazed at the manifold
gifts that were slumbering in this great artiste. Although as deli¬
cate as mimosa, she could generously spend herself on things and
people without depleting her vital energies. The clue to this
mystery is found in the paradoxical law, that in the realm of
the soul, only he who gives, gains, and he who hoards, loses.

I am always reminded, in connection with her, of Napoleon’s

IDA ROLAND

59

political testament; after having enumerated what his son
should do and study, he concludes by this eternal truth: ‘But
all this learning will avail him little if in his heart he has not that
sacred flame, that love of the good which alone can work
miracles.’

This sacred flame, this burning idealism and enthusiasm for
everything which is fine and beautiful was the secret of Ida
Roland and the spell she cast on the stage as in daily life.

Inspired by the sacred flame, Ida Roland lived out her
passionate life of beauty and love, of art and action.‘

At the end of 1950 her health began, for the first time in
her life, to fail. Though in her natural optimism she did not
attach sufficient importance to her heart troubles, we followed
the doctor’s advice to meet the spring on the Mediterranean
coast, and spent happy weeks of undisturbed peace at the
Mimosa Groves of La Rayol. On our way home we stopped
for Easter at a charming cottage overlooking the Lake of
Geneva, near Nyon. There, on Easter Sunday, she was struck
by a sudden heart attack. Without having recovered con¬
sciousness, she passed away very peacefully on Tuesday the
27th March, 1951.

It was a great satisfaction in her last years to see the triumph
of Pan-Europe—the promised land for which she had been
longing and working with all the passion of her great soul.

* In 1951 I published (in Gennan) her biography, In Mmoriam Ida Roland
(Phaidon Press, London).

CHAPTER Vn

WORLD WAR I

On 28th June 1914 was the Vienna Derby Day, the climax and
close of the season.

Idel—I give her this name to distinguish her from my
youngest sister, Ida Coudenhove-Goerrcs, the writer—and I
were in the midst of plans and dreams for the future. The
world seemed to open out before us. All the great painters
wished to paint her. Wilhelm Victor Krausz had completed
her portrait as a young duke of the Renaissance in the costume
of Heinrich Mann’s one-act play The Tyrant. She had just
signed a contract for a two-month star performance of Bernard
Shaw’s comedy The Great Catherine, for a record salary of
sixty thousand gold crowns—a sum hitherto unheard of by
German-speaking actors and actresses. Every day new offers
to appear in star performances came from Berlin and other
cities. The Vienna Burgtheater sought to bind her by a
contract. America’s greatest theatrical manager and impre¬
sario, David Belasco, had come in person from New York to
discuss with her plans for an American tour and to open up
for her a career as a world star.

Amidst these plans and dreams flashed the sudden news on
that hot June day that Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his
wife had been assassinated at Sarajevo. The assassin was a
young Serbian nationalist, one of a group of Austrian Serbs,
who had conspired against the Austro-Hungarian monarchy—
this, however, without the knowledge and consent of the
Serbian government.

Franz Ferdinand had never been popular, and still he had
been the hope of all Austrian patriots who believed that the
regeneration and reform of Austria could be accomplished
without war. It was evident that the system of ruling the
monarchy against the sentiments of its Slav majority could not
be indefinitely maintained and that the empire would only
60

WORLD WAR I

6l

survive if complete equality between all its national groups
could be achieved. Without Hungarian consent a reorgani¬
zation of the monarchy on the basis of national equality was
unconstitutional, and Emperor Franz Joseph would not think
of violating the Hungarian constitution he had sworn to main¬
tain, when, in 1867, he was crowned king of Hungary. How¬
ever, it was an open secret that, as soon as he should die, his
nephew and successor Franz Ferdinand would undertake the
reform against the will of the Magyars—before taking an oath
on the constitution. This was expected any day, for the
Emperor’s strength was failing steadily. He was eighty-five
years old.

Why then did the Sarajevo murder happen? The Serbian
nationalists, within and outside the Habsburg monarchy, did
not believe in a reformed Austro-Hungarian empire, but were
working for the establishment of an independent national state
of their own, uniting all Serbs, Croats, Slovenes under their
national dynasty of the Karageorgevich. The state was to be
Yugoslavia. It had a chance to live only if the empire fell.
Serbian patriots viewed a vigorous successor to the Habsburg
throne with anxiety. They knew that he imperilled their dream
of a Yugoslav kingdom. They conspired to kill him.

For several weeks after the blow fell, the fate of the world
remained in balance.

Ida Roland and I were in Bayreuth, attending the Wagner
festival. The crowd there was as brilliantly cosmopolitan as
ever, composed of Germans and Austrians, Hungarians and
Italians, Russians and Poles, British and French, many of
them linked by ties of blood and friendship. The war hung
poised over our heads like the sword of Damocles, but we
sat day after day peacefully united under the huge dome of the
Opera House.

At the Villa Wahnfried, the Wagners gave their usual big
reception for the more distinguished of Bayreuth’s visitors.
Cosima Wagner and her son Siegfried received us very charm¬
ingly, for my family had had friendly relations with their family

62 AN IDEA CONQUERS THE WORLD

since the day my great-grandmother Marie Kalergis had known
and sponsored Richard Wagner in Paris. I was shown an arm¬
chair which she had personally embroidered for the Maestro,
who had been generous enough to compliment her on her
musical accomplishments. We had a good many friends among
the guests at Wahnfried; half of Vienna’s society seemed to be
there, and everybody was lost in long discussions about the
merits of the festival performances. The air was thick with more
or less subtle evaluations of the singers, the settings and the
Maestro himself—eternal conjurer of all this legendary and
subterranean Germanic splendour.

Suddenly I saw my aunt Marietta Coudenhove coming
towards me together with an elderly man—well dressed,
kindly looking, with an enormous forehead and distinguished
features.

‘ Mr. Houston Stewart Chamberlain,’ my aunt said simply.
We sat down together. I do not recall what we talked about—
Siegfried Wagner had settled down to play, and our attention
was naturally divided—but I remember that he was a suave
talker and a good listener too. I had leisure enough to observe
him carefully, and the thought struck me that this man, who
had so ingeniously sharpened the weapons of super-racialism,
had about him nothing of the anthropologist, everything of
the poet. He would have served the world much better had
he written his epic of the Nordic man in verse rather than in
prose. At least he would have lived up to his true vocation of
spinning dreams rather than prepare fierce fratricide.

The news of the Austrian ultimatum hit Bayreuth like a
bombshell. The date was July 26, and within a day or two
Bayreuth was empty of foreigners, who were all anxious to
leave Germany before the borders were closed.

Peace might have been saved even then had the Czar and
the Kaiser desired it. It was obvious that the Czar had the
power to restrain Serbia and the Kaiser to restrain Austria.
But in St. Petersburg and Berlin nationalists and warmongers
had gained the upper hand. Serbia, backed by Russia, refused
to accept certain points of the Austrian ultimatum, and Austria,

WORLD WAR I

63

backed by Germany, declared war on Serbia. Russia entered
the war as Serbia’s ally, Germany as the ally of Austria, and
France as the ally of Russia. Several days later Germany broke
its pledge to Belgium and violated its neutrality. Britain,
faithful to its pledge to Belgium, thereupon joined the Franco-
Russian alliance. Italy, though an ally of Austria, remained
neutral, because Austria had failed to inform the kingdom of
Vittorio Emmanuele of the impending ultimatum to Serbia.
Austria had thus violated its pact with Italy, and the Italians
were no doubt glad of it.

True, the immediate reason for war lay only in a local
conflict between Austro-Hungary and Serbia, but behind it
stood the major conflict between pan-Germanism and pan-
Slavism. Both were aiming at European domination. Germany
hoped to base its hegemony on the control not only of Austria
but also of Turkey, while Russia hoped to become leader of all
Slavs in the Danubian region, to control the Dardanelles, and
to open the Mediterranean to its fleet. The two plans clashed:
Germany wished to have Austria as vassal; Russia wished to
dismember it, and to transform into vassals, if not all, at least
most of its successor states. Both Russia and Germany needed
the Danubian bcisin as a springboard to European hegemony.

Almost from the very first, chauvinistic ideas began to colour
all the issues of the day. What perturbed me more, however,
were the first threatening signs of racial complex in the
German mind. From Ronsperg I wrote, in August, 1914, to
Ida Roland, who was then at her house in Nymphenburg, a
residential suburb of Munich:

I do not consider the terrible murders and cruelties now raging in
all parts of the world as the most tragic elements of world war. What
is more terrifying than anything, perhaps for centuries to come, is
the awakening of the aggressive tendency of nationalism which is
nothing but the apparently vanishing religious fanaticism, reappear¬
ing under a new form. Thb nationalism was on the defensive in the
last century; the nations were only seeking liberty (Italy). Today
this is changed. Responsible for the change are first of all Chamber-
lain and his group, who, with dubious arguments, try to transform
the nation into an artificial unit and then supplant this unit by an

64 an idea conq,uers the world

idea. The three steps are: first, predominance of the Aryans among
the races, then predominance of the Germanic race among the
Aryans, and finally predominance of the Germans among the
Germanic race. . . .

The prelude to this national struggle was the so-called racial
anti-Semitism. ... I am afraid there are no more cosmopolitans
left in Europe. This hatred is growing automatically—just as
religious hatred grew in the past thousand years. It is the duty of
objectively-minded people of all countries to fight this hatred, this
lie and this blindness with full force. I, too, shall participate in
this task and you, too, will do so; else this war is not an end but
only a beginning of more slaughters. And the guilt for all this lies
with scholeu's like Gobineau and Chamberlain rather than with
war-minded statesmen. My father must have foreseen all this
when, in conscious opposition to Chamberlain, he fought anti-
Semitism. I wish to continue his work on a vaster scale. . . .

I was exempt from military service because of a lung afflic¬
tion and thanked God that I was not obliged to fight a war
which, from the first, I considered a crime and a folly. The
nationalistic slogans failed to impress me; they did not lessen
my sympathies for France and England nor my antipathies
against pan-Germanism and pan-Slavism.

I continued my philosophic and historic studies at the
University of Vienna until the summer of 1917, when I emerged
as a full-fledged doctor of philosophy. I was finishing my book
on ethics* when two events took place which transformed my
negative attitude toward the war into a passionately interested
one: the fall of Czarism and the entry of the United States into
the war.

When Czarism was overthrown, I felt that the Russian people
had vindicated themselves and their war aims. Their war cry,
that the Allies were fighting for democracy had not sounded
very convincing as long as Czarist power remained the most
reactionary in the world. After the fall of Czarism, the central
powers were surrounded on all sides by democratic and pro¬
gressive nations. Now, at last, the threat of Russian despotism
was removed, and if German imperialism too was crushed
there was hope for a better world order. The war was no longer
* Elhik und HypereOuk.

WORLD WAR I

65

a clash between Russian and German imperialism, but a
revolution of the world against the threat of German imperial¬
ism and militarism.

This evolution was underlined by the fact that the United
States had entered the war. Woodrow Wilson’s attitude from
the first gave it an ideological slant. I became passionately
Wilsonian, though Wilson was fighting on the other side of the
fence. But I shared this enthusiasm for Wilson and his ideas
with most Austrians, including their young Emperor Charles,
who had succeeded in December 1916 to his grand-uncle Franz
Joseph. From the first day of his reign he did his best to assure
a negotiated peace on Wilson’s principles—against those of
Ludendorff, Clcmenccau, and Lloyd George. But events were
stronger than his good will.

The issues of the war had boiled down to simple black-and-
white terms, when in the East a second political leader emerged
whose new ideals and aims made a reshuffling of all economic
and political values necessary, at least within central Europe,
which came very close to the new ideological radius of Soviet
Russia.

Lenin will survive in history as a man of gigantic proportions
and one who is much closer to being a religious than a political
leader. From the first, Bolshevism seemed to me no mere
political system but rather a new religion like Christianity,
Islam, or Buddhism. I^nin was very much like a Mohammed
of the north, inspiring his people with a new creed and new
ideals just as Mohammed had inspired the Arabs. Personally
I was anti-Bolshevist, because liberty was my highest ideal, but
I understood the generous impulses of his doctrine which
attempted to rebuild on the ruins of an old world a new one
of social equality and fair opportunity for everyone. It was a
very dynamic doctrine too. I was aware of a good many dark
points within our own capitalist system, but believed that the
democratic system of the west was still capable of social
evolution. Was Soviet Russia a threat to Europe? Would it
hamper the further evolution of Europe? It was difficult to
gauge the expansive urge and power of our Russian neighbour.

66 AN IDEA CONQ,UERS THE WORLD

I was convinced that only a quick peace based on the principles
of Woodrow Wilson would strengthen the democratic principles
within central Europe and forestall the threat of civil war.

The year 1918 was disastrous for Austria. She had entered
the phase of organized famine. Black flour had replaced white,
and almost the only food available were turnips and potatoes.
We were living near Linz in Upper Austria, in a lovely cottage
which belonged to one of my aunts. Only a few miles from
Ottensheim, it overlooked the Danube and commanded a grand
view of the plain all the way to the snow-capped mountains
in the south. And within this rich agricultural land conditions
were still somewhat better than in Vienna.

Between Idel’s star tours to Vienna and Munich, we lived a
quiet, retired country life at the Postlingberg, among the
peasants of Upper Austria. Little Erica was with us—Idel’s
daughter by her short-lived marriage to the son of a well-known
St. Petersburg industrialist, dc Bastian: with her large blue
eyes, long fair hair, red cheeks and clear bell-like laughter,
she was a source of pure joy to us. This darling litde girl grew
up, with all the natural charm she had inherited from her
mother, as our dear and only child.

As the summer days grew shorter the end seemed to approach.
The Allies were progressing on all fronts, in France, in the
Balkans, and in Syria. The hope of the German leaders to end
the war by a decisive victory had vanished when their last
offensive had failed.

In October the decisive blow fell: Germany asked President
Wilson for an armistice; she was ready to conclude a peace
based on the Fourteen Points.

I was full of hope and expectation, living from one news¬
paper edition to the next. I followed with passionate interest
the exchange of messages between Washington, Berlin, and
Vienna; I watched how Wilson with a few short cables over¬
threw the Hohenzollern dynasty and dismembered Austria.
Toward the end of October, Czechoslovakia declared her in¬
dependence; Hungary followed; Galicia joined Poland; Buko-
vina and Transylvania joined Rumania; Croatia, Dalmatia,

WORLD WAR I

67

Bosnia and Herzegovina joined Serbia; and the Trentino, Istria
and Trieste joined Italy. The Austro-Hungarian Empire which
had taken centuries to rise, crumbled within three weeks.

One morning early in November a friend telephoned from
Linz that the revolution was spreading through the rural and
urban districts of Upper Austria. Would we come to share his
house in Linz? Our lonely cottage was unsafe, he thought, as
several farmer-families had been murdered by a gang of escaped
prisoners. We accepted his invitation and spent the next
historic days at Linz—only some blocks away from the balcony
from which, twenty years later, Adolf Hitler was to proclaim
the annexation of Austria by the Third Reich.

During this week a world crumbled and a world was born:
Germany accepted the hard terms of the Armistice, which
practically meant surrender.

The war was over. Wilson had triumphed over the Kaiser—
the New World over the Old.

The world in which I had lived since my childhood vanished
like a dream. My fatherland disappeared. The dynasty, to
which my ancestors had been loyal for centuries, was overthrown
and forced into exile.

On the ruins of this old world a new world seemed to rise:
democratic, republican, socialist and pacifist.

Beyond the disaster of these tragic days my thoughts were
fixed on this new world, on the glorious vision of a League of
Nations uniting all nations and continents of the world in
peaceful collaboration. A League that would replace inter¬
national anarchy by order, arms by arguments, aggression by
justice, revenge by understanding. Could anything more
beautiful be imagined?

This was the world for which I had been born and educated.
A world uniting my far-flung family, my relatives living in all
parts of the globe, into a single community.

My political education was accomplished. I had broken
with the prejudices of my class, with all national imperialisms
and with the narrow outlook of capitalism. I was striving

68 AN IDEA CONQ,UERS THE WORLD

toward international peace, personal liberty, national equality
and social justice, impelled by my international blood and
education.

When the war ended, only five days separated me from my
twenty-fourth birthday, when I should be of age and a full-
fledged citizen. But citizen of what state? That I ignored.
Would I become a citizen of the little Austrian republic in
which I was now living? Or would Austria join the German
republic and transform me into a German citizen? Or would
I become a Czechoslovak citizen, because Ronsperg had
become a part of that new republic?

These questions did not worry me at the moment. I had
practically no nationality and no citizenship until the con¬
clusion of the peace. But I had acquired a wider and greater
citizenship: I was conscious of being a citizen of the world,
determined to live and to work not for one country, but for
the brotherhood of men.

I was grateful to my destiny for having been born in the era
of the League, in the era of Woodrow Wilson, in the era of the
rebirth of the world under the impulse of new and generous
ideals.

I was happy to be young, happy to be able to participate
in that gigantic task of reconciliation and of reconstruction.
I gave up my plans for living the contemplative life of a
philosopher and pledged myself to work for the new world
emerging from the ruins of the war.

CHAPTER Vm

SOVIET-MUNICH

Throughout the winter of 1918-19, behind the closely
guarded doors of the Hotel Crillon in Paris, the future of
Europe was debated between Wilson and the European
nationalists. Wilson’s opposite numbers in Europe, Clemen-
ceau and Lloyd George, forced so many concessions on him
and led him to compromise on so many matters that the final
text of the Peace Treaty turned out to be a mere caricature of
the famous Fourteen Points.

In those days I often thought of writing a personal letter
to Wilson. It seemed to me that I might appeal to him in the
name of European youth and assure him that among the
common people of Europe there was unstinting support for
his actions and for his ideals. If only he could address himself
direct to these common people—over the heads of their states¬
men—public opinion in every country would greet his pro¬
posals with enthusiasm and Governments would be compelled
to follow him.

But somehow I never contrived to put pen to paper. I
was after all only an unknown citizen of Central Europe—
of doubtful nationality at that—and without either standing
or renown. The chances were that my letter would never reach
Wilson, but find its way unread into a wastepaper basket. At
best it might reach the desk of a minor assistant secretary,
whence it would eventually vanish unobserved. Clearly, I
had to get myself better known before I could hope to act
effectively in a political sense. Instead of composing letters
destined for Wikon’s wastepaper basket, I would have to
write articles and try to get these published in newspapers or
magazines. Alternatively, I might try my hand at politics,
but this possibility seemed practically ruled out by the fact
that there was no party whose principles wholly appealed to
me. What I was seeking—but failed to find—was some special

70 AN IDEA CONQ,UERS THE WORLD

brand of socialism which played down the materialistic aspects
of Marxism.

These thoughts led me to become a freelance journalist,
without commitment to any political party. My first article,
‘Plato’s State in Relation to Contemporary Life’, appeared
in the magazine Die Erde, of which my young brother-in-law,
Walter Rilla, who later became a film-star, was editor. This
article argued the case for a socialist economy modelled on
Plato’s ideals and directed by an intellectual aristocracy.
Before long, several leading German periodicals, among them
Neue Rundschau, Z'ikunft and Neuer Merkur, invited me to con¬
tribute regularly, and within two years I was beginning to make
my mark among the intelligentsia of Europe.

Europe’s soul was in those days being fiercely wooed by two
rival suitors—Wilson and Lenin. Wilson promised peace and
liberty. His generous philosophy was founded on American
ideals: all men who had hitherto lived under the domination
of others, individuals as well as whole nations, were to be freed
and their peaceful existence was to be made secure by collective
action. The League of Nations was to be the first step towards
the creation of the United States of the World.

In the prevailing mood, such an ideal was by no means
utopian. For it seemed as if, for the first time in history, man¬
kind in general was ready to subscribe to a common political
ideology, based on democracy and national self-determination.
The political systems of the past had been uprooted: the
absolutism of the Czars, the Manchu Empire, the despotism
of the Turkish Sultans, the Prussian militarism of the Hohen-
zollerns, the semi-feudal monarchy of the Hapsburgs—all these
were of the past. New republics were coming to life and even
the Japanese Empire showed signs of transforming itself into
a constitutional monarchy. What could be more natural than
that these democracies should want to live together peacefully
and support a League of Nations whose aim it was to guarantee
that peace?

The one dark cloud in this generally hopeful prospect was
the new Soviet Union which rose from strength to strength on

SOVIET-MUNICH

71

the ruins of the Czarist Empire. Yet the leaders of the demo¬
cratic world did not think it worth their while to invite Lenin’s
participation at the work of the Peace Conference. Convinced
as they were that the days of the Communist regime were
numbered, they took it for granted that a democratic Russia
would ultimately become an enthusiastic member of the
League. But the fact of the matter was that, while the West
nursed fond hopes of a powerful League and of everlasting
peace, Lenin prepared actively for world revolution.

Lenin, too, had visions of drawing together all mankind into
a single community. But he was convinced that this could not
be achieved without a radical change in the structure of society.
For as long as the capitalist system continued to exist, he could
visualize neither peace nor justice. To him democracy was a
mere sham. He refused to recognize the verdict of the polls so
long as capitalist domination made its influence felt through
a strong press and a reactionary Church. Hence the first bas¬
tions to be stormed were the capitalist economy and the bour¬
geois element in society: the leaders of both were to be expro¬
priated and ruthlessly stripped of their power. This first assault
on the old system was to be followed by a dictatorship of the
proletariat which would last until all class distinctions had been
eliminated. Only then could it be said that the conditions of a
true democracy had been created and could work be begun on
the gradual dismantling of the state and the establishment of
genuine peace among nations.

Throughout Russia, Lenin had won immense support for
his creed. Operating from this powerful base, he began to stir
up the backward peoples of Asia and Africa against their white
masters, and the working peoples of the civilized world against
their capitalist employers. In a Europe laid prostrate by war
and misery, there was no knowing where the effect of such
revolutionary preaching might end.

The intelligentsia of Europe was tom between the rival
creeds of Wilson and Lenin, of democracy and communism.

From the very start I had chosen to follow Wilson, because
he seemed to me to stand for peace, whereas Lenin’s creed

72 AN IDEA CONQ.UERS THE WORLD

could, if at all, be achieved only at the cost of more blood¬
shed and cruelty. Somewhat to my surprise, I was soon to have
an opportunity of making the acquaintance of the Bolshevist
system at close quarters.

In the first days of April 1919 I accompanied my wife to
Munich where she was playing the star role in Jealousy, a play
by Arzibatcheff. Munich was then the focal point of the
German revolutionary movement. Even before the Kaiser’s
abdication, the city had proclaimed itself a republic. The
leading spirit behind this proclamation had been Kurt
Eisner, an elderly intellectual from Northern Germany. His
confused political idealism oscillated between the creeds of
Wilson and Lenin. Through his hostile and independent atti¬
tude towards the central authorities in Berlin he had won the
whole-hearted support of the powerful separatist elements in
Bavaria.

A few days before our arrival in Munich, this first Premier
of the Bavarian Republic had been shot dead, in the midst of
his personal bodyguard, by a young nobleman, Count Arco. The
city was now in turmoil. No one knew what would happen next.

Then one morning we woke up to see the whole city covered
with posters: Bavaria had been proclaimed a Soviet republic!
At first this change in its status seemed to make little difference
to the ordinary routine of life. The opening performance of
Jealousy was brilliantly successful, and the company played to
a packed house for many evenings. A fortnight later the situa¬
tion changed abruptly. The moderate members of the Munich
Commune were displaced by Communists and by Socialist
extremists, whilst the leadership of the executive fell exclusively
into Communist hands. Shops were looted; hundreds of inno¬
cent citizens were imprisoned; hostages were taken, and sub¬
sequently released on payment of a substantial ransom. To keep
the city in a state of constant fear, the alarm signal was pealed
nightly by the church bells. Munich was cut off from the out¬
side world, and we were unable to leave the city.

We lived at the Park Hotel on the Maximiliansplatz. At
three o’clock one morning my wife was woken from her sleep

SOVIET-MUNICH 73

by a peremptory knock on the door, followed by shouts of:
‘Open up for the state-police!’

A group of heavily armed sailors, wearing red arm-bands,
swarmed into her room: ‘What is your name?’

‘Ida Roland.’

Then in broad Bavarian dialect: ‘Oh, so you’re the actress.
Don’t worry, just let us sec your passport.’

The leader of the group looked at her with amazement.
‘What, you a countess?’

‘Yes, my husband is a count.’

‘Where is he?’

‘ Next door.’

Presendy they stormed into my room. ‘You are a count?
Get dressed and follow us!’

Whilst I dressed, the sailors made a careful search of every
cupboard and drawer in the room for hidden weapons and
anti-Communist literature. Meanwhile Idcl began a conver¬
sation with the leader: ‘Why all this fuss about a count?’
she said in her assumed Bavarian dialect; ‘after all, Tolstoy
was a count.’ The red sailor looked perplexed; he fumbled for
an answer, for in those days Tolstoy was often described on
Munich posters as the spiritual father of Lenin—it was hoped
by this to make Communism more popular in this city of the
arts. Before the sailor had time to think of a suitable reply,
Idcl handed him a copy of Die Erde, containing my article on
Plato. She pointed to the cover where my name appeared
without its title. The sailor at once assumed a more friendly
attitude. He started to read my article, but soon gave up in
despair, for he was unable to determine whether this man
Plato was a Bolshevist or a reactionary. I could understand
his embarrassment only too well, for this is a question which
I have tried in vain to answer all my life. Finally he abandoned
the unequal contest and left the room, muttering: ‘I’ll have
to take this down to our chief. Comrade Seidl.’

For two hours we waited under the watchful eyes of the
sailors, who smoked cigarettes but refrained from molesting
us. Then the leader returned, He handed the magazine back

74 an idea conq,uers the world

to me, told us that we could go to bed again, and, wishing us
good night in a very friendly way, withdrew his little force
from our room.

One of our neighbours in the hotel was a young prince, von
Thurn und Taxis, whose acquaintance we had made a few
days earlier. That same night he was arrested and taken away
in an armoured car. Later, when the regular troops relieved
the city, he was shot jis a hostage together with eight others.
Comrade Seidl, who had ordered this massacre, was condemned
to death and executed a few weeks later.

The following nights we spent at the house of some friends,
but we made the sad discovery during these trying days that
some so-called friends found the most unconvincing excuses for
not receiving us in their homes: concealing aristocrats in a
Soviet republic was evidently too dangerous for their tastes!

In spite of its terrorist regime, the Munich Commune
was a good deal less violent than other Soviet revolutions.
The reason for this lay partly in its brief duration, but largely
in the fact that there were among its leading figures a number
of misguided idealists who were not prepared to go as far as
committing atrocities and thereby frustrated the deliberate
policy of those who were agents of Moscow. Among these
humanitarians three names in particular stood out: Gustav
Landauer, Erich Miihsam and Ernst Toller. Landauer was
beaten to death by the regular troops on their arrival; Muhsam
was tortured to death years later in one of Hitler’s concentra¬
tion camps; and Toller—a highly talented young poet of great
courage and excellent character—whose acquaintance we
were to make subsequently, committed suicide as a refugee in
New York years later.

At last, after many anxious days, we heard the welcome sound
of gunfire. The Bavarian Army was approaching Munich.
Shots were fired in the streets. A corpse lay on the stairs of our
host’s house: no one knew whether he had been a Communist
or an anti-Communist, but no one dared touch the body for
fear of being held responsible for the murder.

SOVIET-MUNICH

75

During the last few days we had been unable to leave our
hotel. Secretly, though with the knowledge of the manager, we
slept in supposedly untenanted rooms, so as not to risk being
arrested in the frequent searches which punctuated the nights.

Presently the first troops arrived in the city. From our
window we observed the decisive skirmish on the Maximilians-
platz. Guns started firing from behind the magnificent Hilde¬
brand fountain; their target was the Justizpalast, where the
Communists had established temporary headquarters. The
fighting was very bitter on both sides. We saw men fall in action
and die. Volunteers on the Communist side wore red arm-
bands—those on the anti-Communist side white arm-bands.
As the regular troops won the upper hand, we observed one
group of young armed civilians throw away their red bands
and replace them with white handkerchiefs.

After what seemed an endless battle, a white flag at last
appeared on the roof of the Justizpalast: the battle was over.
We hailed incoming troops as our liberators. Little did we
suspect that their commander. General Ritter von Epp, would
one day end up as a leading figure in the Third Reich. On the
first available train we left Munich, and had no regrets as we
passed the Austrian frontier at Salzburg.

Paradoxically enough, the Munich Commune helped to pave
the way for National Socialism. Having been the focal point of
the red revolution, Munich now transformed itself into the
Mecca of the counter-revolution. In reaction against the terror
they had witnessed, Bavaria’s town-dwellers and farmers, her
church and her army, her aristocracy and her oflicialdom be¬
came fanatically anti-Bolshevist and were ready to join any
movement which offered to shield them from a recurrence of
this terror. Reactionaries from all over Germany began to con¬
verge on Munich, chief among them General Ludendorff and
his wife.

This outburst of anti-Marxism had also a fanatical anti-
Semitic content, since Kurt Eisner and most of the leading
men of the Commune had been North German or Russian Jews.
Thus had the way been cleared for National Socialist agitation.

76 AN IDEA CON(iUERS THE WORLD

When we visited Munich a few months later, I noticed a
poster announcing a mass meeting of protest against the
Versailles Treaty. At the foot of a rather long-winded text
there were a few additional words in heavy type: ‘Half price
for invalids. Jews are not admitted.’ The poster was signed by a
totally unknown name: Adolf Hitler.

One of the ways in which the seed of National Socialism
was sown throughout Germany was the mass distribution of
the so-called Protocols of the Elders of Soon after the war,

hundreds of thousands of copies of this little booklet were sold
and issued free of charge. It contained what were alleged to
be secret protocols of the Basle Zionist Congress of 1897, with
a detailed programme of action for the establishment of a
Jewish world dictatorship under the leadership of a descendant
of David.

This booklet had made its first appearance in Russia at
the beginning of the century, but attracted little attention on
account of the obvious absurdity of its contents. Only after the
Bolshevist victory did it gain new topicality, for in some
respects the methods of the Bolshevist dictatorship and of its
propaganda machine followed the lines laid down in the
protocols. This led men like Henry Ford, General Ludendorff
and others to believe in the authenticity of the protocols and
to see in Russian Bolshevism an attempt to put the programme
into action. Even the London Times devoted a series of articles
to the ‘ protocols ’. Millions of Germans who had not hitherto
concerned themselves with the Jewish problem suddenly became
violent anti-Semites. They convinced themselves without ap¬
parent difficulty that the Jews had unleashed the world war
in order to pave the way for world revolution; that having
embarked on war, they then stabbed the victorious German
armies in the back; and that they now worked for Bolshevism,
some openly, others in clandestine fashion, as a means of pre¬
paring their own world domination.

A happy coincidence led to the unmasking of this gigantic
fraud. One day Philip Graves, The Times correspondent in
Constantinople, happened to look at an old book by Maurice

SOVIET-MUNIGH

77

Joly, which had been published in Brussels in 1865 and was
called Conversation in Hell between Machiavelli and Montesquieu.
Graves, whose acquaintance I subsequently made in London,
told me how in this book he came across the same ideas and
arguments that were alleged to have been laid down in the
‘protocols’. He compared the two texts and, to his amazement,
found whole pages of the one identical with the other. The
only difference was that Joly’s book was in no way concerned
with the Jews: its author, an opponent of Napoleon III, had
sought refuge in Belgium and written this book to reveal
Napoleon’s alleged plans for world conquest.

More detailed enquiries revealed not only that the ‘ protocols ’
were fakes, but also that they had been written and circulated
by the Russian secret police in Paris with the object of forcing
Tsar Nicholas II to adopt anti-Semitic measures. Henry Ford
admitted at once to having been deceived, but more gullible
Germans continued to believe in their authenticity. Proof of
their real origin was conveniently ignored; belief in a Jewish
world plot had in fact become such a firm article of faith with
millions of Germans that they saw in militant anti-Semitism
their only hope of salvation.

While we were witnessing the strange events of the Munich
Commune, the statesmen assembled in Paris decided the fate
of Europe. In that fateful year 1919, the prophets of the
twentieth century, Wilson and Lenin, suffered defeat at the
hands of the old forces of European nationalism. The former
enthusiasm for President Wilson’s new order of peace and free¬
dom soon ebbed away. Peoples and governments began to show
more concern for such territorial gains as could be immedi¬
ately achieved at the expense of the defeated powers of Central
Europe.

The Paris Peace Treaties left Europe more disintegrated
than ever before. The mighty Austro-Hungarian Empire had
been rent asunder. Germany, weighed down with heavy repa¬
ration payments, nursed dreams of revenge. The Treaty of
Trianon, which split up not only the old Hungarian Kingdom
but also the so-called ‘Magyar region’, stood in the way of

78 AN IDEA CONQUERS THE WORLD

Danubian reconciliation just as the Bulgarian Peace Treaty
concluded at Neuilly prevented the formation of a strong
Balkan group. A dozen replicas of Alsace-Lorraine were
created in Eastern Europe, each of them a direct threat to
world peace.

In Turkey, Mustapha Kemal Pasha staged a rising, tore up
the Treaty of Sevres and waged war against the victorious
powers until he succeeded in driving them from Turkish
soil. In Hungary, Bela Kun did his best to frustrate the Treaty
of Trianon by allying himself with Russia. But Soviet-Hungary
soon collapsed and, as in the case of Munich, gave way to a
reactionary regime dominated by fanatical nationalists, anti-
Semites and anti-Bolshevists—a prototype of subsequent Fascist
regimes elsewhere in Europe.

Whilst, in the salons of the Hotel Grillon, Wilson suffered
defeat at the hands of the leaders of European nationalism,
Lenin was locked in battle with the same forces before the city
walls of Warsaw. Lenin, too, was beaten; not by the ideology
of Wilson but by the armies of Pilsudski.

One hope alone remained: the League of Nations. It was
still possible to hope that Geneva might mend what Paris had
so obviously shattered. In the Covenant of the League there
was a clause providing for the revision of treaties which had
become unworkable.

Before long this hope vanished, too. The American Senate
refused to ratify the Covenant. President Wilson fell seriously
ill and his party was defeated at the polls. America became
strongly isolationist and left Europe to its fate.

At about the same time the attempt at fostering world
revolution also came to grief. The civil war had absorbed
all Bolshevist forces. After the defeat of Warsaw, new ex¬
pansionist adventures had, for the time being at least, to be
shelved.

European nationalism had thus scored a decisive victory over
the dreams of Wilson and Lenin. The Europe which emerged
from this Pyrrhic victory was hopelessly divided, weak and
impoverished. Gone for ever was the hope that Europe might

SOVIET-MUNICH 79

rule the world; even its chances of survival seemed seriously
threatened.

During this political crisis I gave more thought than ever
to certain basic moral problems. It seemed to me that the great
political crisis through which we were passing had its roots in
a deeper moral crisis.

For centuries European ethics had been rooted in religion,
in the faith that God had revealed to man certain moral laws
which man must follow. Millions of Europeans of our genera¬
tion have forsaken this faith and with it their belief in binding
moral obligations. The consequence has been the collapse of
morality in our times.

I asked myself whether there could be other foundations
for morality than religious dogma and found this question
answered by my observations of Greece and the Far East.
In the cultures represented by these two areas, morality has
always been founded not on religion but on beauty. Ethics
is the aesthetics of the soul, the doctrine of inner beauty—
just as aesthetics is the doctrine of beauty in the outside world.
There cannot be two different sets of values, only one com¬
prehensive set embracing both aesthetics and morality. The
law of nature, which compels each star to follow its course
and which transforms drops of water into snowflakes, also
demands of us that we act aesthetically—that we show ourselves
strong, pure and sane.

Just as men and women do not want to appear ugly, so they
dislike acting in a base manner once they have recognized the
identity of moral and aesthetic values; hence, the two old moral
conceptions of ‘good and evil’ ought really to be replaced by
their aesthetic counterparts, ‘noble and base’. My book on
Ethics and Superethics Z'pjtQZTtA in the Leipzig ‘Ncucr Geist’
edition, with the introductory motto: ‘Virtue is human—
beauty divine.’

Shortly after, the same house published two pamphlets of
mine: An Apologia of Technology and Mobility.

Apologia of Technology deals with the part played by modem

8o AN IDEA CONQ,UERS THE WORLD

science in helping man master the forces of nature. Electricity,
for instance, whose murderous or, at best, incendiary
properties in the form of lightning had previously been feared
by man, was now securely harnessed to his service: it helps
cook his meals and heats and lights his home. The mastering
of this source of energy alone has made it possible for man to
dispense with whole armies of slaves. Altogether, technical
progress is a large-scale attempt by northern man—who has
suffered more than his southern neighbour from the caprices
of the elements—to break away at last from their despotism.
But technical progress and ethics, far from being mutually
exclusive, complement each other like body and soul; technical
progress will fail in its mission unless it remains conscious
always of its subservience to higher ethical values.

'Nobility is concerned with the problem of aristocracy in
its various aspects. It expounds the thesis that our democratic
age is only an interlude between the old feudal aristocracy,
based on birth, and the aristocracy of the future based, as it
will be, on mental and moral superiority. The new intellectual
nobility will have its democratic foundations just like the
Chinese mandarine system or the hierarchy of the Roman
Catholic Church: all may attain the highest offices, provided
they make the grade.

These pamphlets and a series of articles published elsewhere
provoked a considerable stir. I had from the start been
attracted more by philosophical and ethical problems than by
political ones. Had I been born a generation earlier, I might
have led the quiet contemplative life of a philosopher without
ever engaging in politics. But at a time when the world seemed
on fire, I deemed it irresponsible to follow my desire for pure
contemplation and withdraw from the struggle that was being
waged all around.

To have no politics may be a comforting slogan. Those who
make use of it to shirk their responsibilities share in the guilt for
every catastrophe which they have not actively tried to avoid.
Napoleon once remarked to Goethe: ‘Politics are our destiny’;
for better or for worse, this has become the motto of our time.

CHAPTER IX

PRESIDENT MASARYK

In the latter part of 1919 I found myself wistfully inspecting a
map of the world. I was trying to find a formula that would
enable the United States to join the League of Nations without
giving up its own Monroe Doctrine. Without America the
League could never be more than a fragmentary institution,
doomed to ultimate failure. With America it might usher in a
new and better age.

Presendy I noticed the north-south line which in Europe
divides the democracies of the West from the territory of the
Soviet Union and which, beyond the Mediterranean, corres¬
ponds to the boundary between British Africa and the colonial
territories of continental Europe. To the east of this African
boundary, the British Empire extends in a gigantic arc round the
Indian Ocean, all the way from Capetown to Sydney.

This observation gave me the clue to a possible division
of the world into five huge regions, a division which would
make it possible both for the United States and for the Soviet
Union to join the League of Nations.

Three of these regions were already in an advanced stage of
organization: Pan-America; the northern part of the Old
World, where the Soviet Union was predominant; and the
southern part of the Old World, which was the preserve of the
British Empire. In the Far East, Japan was attempting to
organize a Mongolian bloc incorporating China, Only the
fifth region, Pan-Europe, lacked all organization, notwith¬
standing the fact that it forms a clear-cut geographical unit
between the Petsamo-Katanga line and the Atlantic Ocean
and that it is based on a common civilization, a common
history and common traditions.

Could these twenty-six European democracies not be merged
into one large union, modelled on that of Pan-America? If this
were possible, the United States, as a partner in Pan-America,

82 AN IDEA CONQ.UERS THE WORLD

would find it easy to join the League since she would
no longer risk being entangled in European conflicts. The
Soviet Union, too, could join such a League, without fear of
interference in her internal affairs. It seemed to me, therefore,
that the establishment of Pan-Europe must be the first step
towards a broadening—and indeed the survival—of the League
of Nations.

The more thought I gave to these questions the more I felt
attracted towards the idea of Pan-Europe. I soon became
convinced that Pan-Europe was the only hope of avoiding a
second world war. The nations of the Continent were hope¬
lessly divided into revisionists and anti-revisionists. Germany,
Hungary, Bulgaria and Lithuania pressed for revision. Russia
supported them because of her own Bessarabian claims, whilst
Italy,Vhose colonial demands had been ignored in the peace¬
making, was always on the verge of moving towards the
revisionist camp. Mustapha Kemal’s success in revising the
Treaty of Sevres gave the revisionists everywhere new hope.
But France, Poland and the countries of the Litde Entente had
made up their minds to oppose forcefully any attempt at
revision. One did not have to be a prophet to see that, sooner
or later, this conflict of views w'as bound to lead to a second
world war; only Pan-Europe could prevent it.

Revisionists and anti-revisionists could have compromised
on a programme aimed at concealing the existence of the
disputed frontiers: militarily, this could have been achieved
by a system of alliances, based on adequate arbitration pro¬
cedure; economically, it could have been done by a customs
union and a common currency; whilst politically, it would
have had to rest on the provision of effective safeguards for
minorities. Only a programme of such a kind could have taken
the sting out of reparations and frontiers troubles and paved
the way for a policy of reconciliation and mutual respect
between the victorious and the vanquished nations.

Another point in favour of Pan-Europe was that in the
creation of a large European market without internal tariff
protection lay the only hope of a quick rise in the European

PRESIDENT MASARYK 83

Standard of living. The forty-eight American states offered
to the world the unaccustomed spectacle of mass-prosperity,
based on the interplay of mass-production and mass-consump¬
tion, high wages and relatively low prices. Clearly, such pros¬
perity would have been unthinkable if each of the forty-eight
states had been economically surrounded by a barrier. Europe
could only follow the American example by establishing a
customs union within Europe.

A third argument for Pan-Europe was the mounting Russian
threat. It was to be expected that Russia, having fought out
her civil war, would recover fairly quickly thanks to her
immense resources and her large population. Alone, none of
her European neighbours could withstand Russian pressure:
alone, Finland, Poland, Roumania, the Baltic states, the
Danubian powers, the Balkans, Scandinavia, a disarmed
Germany—all these would be easy prey for Russia. Only if
the three hundred million citizens of Europe agreed to join
forces in one common defensive system could peace be
guaranteed between them and the one hundred and fifty million
Soviet citizens; only thus could disarmament be made effective
on both sides.

I was aware from the start that the main obstacle to the
unification of Europe would be the British question. For,
whilst on the one hand the British Isles are an essential part
of Europe, they are also the nerve-centre of a world-wide
Empire, extending over five continents. This special position
makes it very difficult for Britain to tie herself exclusively to
Europe. A union of Great Britain with Pan-Europe might cause
Canada to secede from the Empire and join Pan-America, with
all the incalculable consequences such a move would entail
for the political and economic unity of the Empire.

' Clearly, therefore, membership of a purely European
organization was not a practical proposition for Great Britain.
Nor would Britain view with favour a united Continent from
which she herself was excluded. For four centuries it had been
her traditional policy to oppose any form of continental unity.
Was it likely that she would now change this policy in view of

84 an idea CON(i,UERS THE WORLD

the Russian danger? Could a new-found balance of power
between Pan-Europe and Soviet Russia take the place of the
old game of balancing one European nation against another?
Would Britain not take fright at the thought of being excluded
from the European market?

To unite Europe notwithstanding British resistance seemed
virtually impossible. Her prestige, her diplomacy, her financial
resources and her navy still made Britain the strongest power in
Europe. Many smaller nations, such as Portugal, Greece, Nor¬
way, Belgium, the Netherlands and Denmark felt themselves
closer to Britain than to the Continent. Nor was France willing
to weaken her well-tried entente with Britain in exchange for
a highly uncertain alliance with Germany. Besides, Germany’s
own revisionist hopes began at about that time to centre on
Britain.

Only one solution seemed possible, and this was a com¬
plicated and difficult one: a united Continent working in close
co-operation with Great Britain and her Empire. Clearly, Pan-
Europe and the Empire could not afford to pursue separate
policies toward the rest of the world. Europe’s purpose could
be achieved by associating Britain with the European system
without making her part of it.

The attitude of the Empire towards European unity reminded
me in many ways of that adopted in the nineteenth century
by the Hapsburg Monarchy towards the unification of Ger¬
many. Austria, besides being a German country, was also the
nerve-centre of a large international empire. The effect of
incorporating German Austria into Greater Germany would
undoubtedly have been to destroy the Hapsburg Monarchy.
On the other hand, Austria was equally anxious to prevent a
unification of Germany from which she herself was excluded.
This dilemma was finally resolved in 1878 through the unifica¬
tion of the Reich without Austria, coupled with an alliance
between united Germany and the Hapsburg Monarchy. But
for the shortsightedness of Austrian politicians, this mutually
advantageous solution could easily have been achieved by
negotiation and need not have awaited the crisis of 1866. It

PRESIDENT MASARYK 85

was perhaps not too much to hope that British statesmanship
would realize that a united Continent closely linked with
Britain represented the best possible guarantee of lasting
peace.

The crux of the whole Pan-European problem thus lay in the
unification of the Continent in close accord with Great Britain.
It was the squaring of the circle.

Pan-America, by A. H. Fried, was the first book I ever read
in connection with Pan-Europe. I studied keenly the history
of the Pan-American Union which was to be a pattern for
Pan-Europe. Under the influence of this prototype, I preferred
to speak of Pan-Europe rather than of the United States of
Europe. For the example of the United States of America, with
its strong central administration, would have struck terror into
the heart of every European government.

The success of the Pan-American Union was due largely
to the sponsorship it had received from the United States.
Which country was to take a similar initiative for Pan-Europe?
Where was the European Piedmont, which would place its
power at the service of unification?

Logically, this task should have fallen to France. She
maintained the strongest army in Europe, She had an alliance
with Poland and the Little Entente. She was the traditional
pioneer of European unification. A French initiative would
thus have had a better chance of succeeding than that of any
other country. But any such step on the part of France was
out of the question. France was then dominated by Poincare’s
nationalist majority. He would certainly have refused to
jeopardize his reparations policy by taking the initiative in
Pan-European affairs. The fact of the matter was that if
Poincare had attempted such an initiative, his government
Avould have been overthrown at once.

A German initiative was still more impossible. Even if it
had come from a great and genuine European like Walter
Rathenau, the world would have received it scornfully and
with distrust. Nor was Italy, rent asunder by internal dissent,
capable of conducting a vigorous foreign policy.

86 AN IDEA CONQUERS THE WORLD

At that moment only one group of powers seemed able to
take the initiative; the Little Entente. Heir to the Hapsburg
Monarchy, the Little Entente, with its fifty million inhabitants,
almost qualified as a Great Power. Its three members—Czecho¬
slovakia, Roumania and Yugoslavia—were about to form a
federal union which might subsequently have included the
Balkan states in the south and Poland in the north. By means
of suitable concessions, Austria and Hungary might also have
been brought into the fold. Besides, any initiative emanating
from the Little Entente could not have failed to bring its ally
France closer to the idea of Pan-Europe.

The political leadership of the Little Entente centred on
Prague. It was from Prague, therefore, that the initiative had
to come.

Through the Treaty of St. Germain I had become a Czech
citizen. Thus, without any effort on my part, I now suddenly
found myself a citizen of the victorious Entente. I accepted
this change in the spirit of Spinoza’s ‘ Amor fati ’, which bids
us not simply to bear our fate, but actually to love it, and I
became a loyal citizen of my new country.

My only personal tie with Czechoslovakia was my deep-felt
admiration for my new President, Thomas G. Masaryk. No
other statesman in Europe rivalled him either in wisdom or
in moral authority. Talking to him reminded me of Plato’s
maxim that the world would only then be happy when wise
men were crowned or crowned heads became wise. Here in
Czechoslovakia, the wisest citizen had become king; the nation
had elected her greatest son to be President.

I liked everything‘about Masaryk: that he once risked his
reputation to prove that the alleged national epic of Czecho¬
slovakia, the so-called Kdniginhof Manuscript, was a forgery;
that he again exposed himself to popular resentment to save
the life of Hilsner, an innocent Jew, who stood accused on a
charge of ritual murder. At the age of sixty-four Masaryk
had gone into exile to serve his people. Now he had returned
to Prague as the uncrowned king of Czechoslovakia, his prestige
higher than ever, both at home and abroad.

PRESIDENT MASARYK

87

Here at last was a real European, a man who would com¬
prehend my ideas and help me to achieve them, A Pan-
Europcan movement launched by Thomas Masaryk could not
but be acclaimed vigorously by the whole of Europe. The
Little Entente would certainly follow his lead. So would the
best elements in France, Germany, Italy and Poland. Masaryk
towered impressively above every other politician in Europe.
He alone had the independence of mind and the outward
prestige needed to guide Europe to its unification.

In the spring of 1920 Masaryk received me. As I passed
under the thick arches of the Hradschin Palace, a feeling of
uneasiness came over me. For the first time in my life I would
confer with a statesman; a statesman, moreover, who happened
to be the leader of my own country and for whom I had a
deep personal admiration. But as soon as Masaryk greeted me
with his friendly smile I lost my embarrassment. Masaryk
proved to be the great and simple man I had hoped and
expected to find. I had less the feeling that I was talking to
my President than that I was talking to one of my university
professors.

This man with his white hair and goatee beard, his narrow
face and slender figure, gave the impression of being a highly
cultured French scholar. Like all really great men, he seemed
unaffected by his fame. He was anxious to learn and gather
information, not to impress others.

I had sent him some of my philosophical articles—and he had
read them. We began to talk of these problems. Then we came
to the subject of Europe. When I explained to him the neces¬
sity and the practicability of Pan-Europe, he listened attentively
and asked one or two questions. Finally I asked him to take
the necessary initiative and become the George Washington
of the United States of Europe.

He replied: T believe your idea is right and the day will
come when the United States of Europe will be established.
But I fear that day is not yet.’ He then told me how, during
the Paris Peace Conference, he had tried to bring into existence
the United States of Eastern Europe and how he had been

88 AN IDEA CONQUERS THE WORLD

assisted in this by his Greek friend, Venizelos, and by his
Roumanian friend, Take Jonescu. The United States of Eastern
Europe was to be a union of all states from Russia to Germany
from Finland to Greece. This great project had come to nothing
because of nationalist opposition. Only the Little Entente
emerged from it. Pan-Europe would, he feared, meet a similar
fate. As president of a constitutional state, he could not there¬
fore identify himself with my plan, though personally he
supported it wholeheartedly, and though he was prepared to
promote it unofficially to the best of his ability.

Behind these arguments I discovered the real reason for
Masaryk’s refusal. Though he was young in spirit even at
the age of seventy, his dynamism had gone. He no longer had
the strength to take up a fight which would prove long and
difficult and whose outcome he would hardly live to sec.
Shortly before his death he told an interviewer: Tf I were
thirty-five, I would put every ounce of energy into the realiza¬
tion of the United States of Europe.’

On leaving Masaryk, I felt sad. In him I had clearly found
both a sponsor and a wise old friend, whom I visited whenever
I was in Prague and who was always happy to hear about
the progress of our movement. But I had failed to obtain from
him that active support which we so badly needed.

CHAPTER X

THE PUZZLE THAT WAS EUROPE

After my talk with Masaryk I was convinced that no govern¬
mental action in favour of Pan-Europe could be expected
for the time being. I therefore decided to seize the initiative
myself.

I thought of Mazzini’s Young Italy, of Theodor Herzl’s
Zionist Movement. I also thought of my childhood days when
my father’s friend Suhraworthy, then totally unknown, started
the Pan-Islamic movement from scratch. I now set out to
establish contact with all organizations of Pan-European
character and with all personalities who shared my views on
the subject of Pan-Europe. With their co-operation I hoped
to create a vigorous Pan-European movement.

But my search was in vain. It seemed as if no one was
interested in promoting the unification of Europe. There was
certainly no movement with that specific aim. Nor was
there any literature which could have served as a beginning
for us. Political journals were full of articles on all sorts of
questions—except that of Europe’s future. Europe seemed some¬
how to have been forgotten altogether.

There is a simple explanation for this: after the First World
War, Europe was split into three political camps, the Nationa¬
lists, the Pacifists and the Communists. The Nationalists
believed in their proven policy of armaments, alliances and
tariff walls, and had no interest in Pan-Europe. The Pacifists
were irrevocably wedded to the concept of the League. Geneva
was their spiritual home and they looked upon any new idea
which risked diverting public interest from the League as a
source of trouble and harm. They too therefore had little
sympathy for Pan-Europe. The Communists, finally, made no
secret of their hostility towards Pan-Europe, since this would
give the West enough strength to stand up to the Soviet
Union.

go AN IDEA CONQUERS THE WORLD

True Europeans were to be found only among writers of
independent mind. It was not difficult, for instance, to make
a convert of Maximilian Harden or of Heinrich Mann, in whose
delightful one-act plays my wife had just then appeared and
who was an intimate friend of ours. But any enterprise launched
on the initiative of a group of German writers would at that
time have derived more harm than good from the association.
The distrust of all things German was still too profound.

Everything now depended on careful preparation. Above all,
no harm must come to the movement as a result of precipitate
action. I began by studying the European problem from
various aspects: political, economic, cultural and historical.

I discovered to my surprise that the feeling of European
consciousness had first shown itself during the Crusades. After
the fall of the Roman Empire the Crusades represented the
most vigorous display of European solidarity. For a time,
feuds between kings, princes and cities were submerged in
a common cause.

The first programme for Pan-Europe came from the pen of
Pierre Dubois, a court lawyer of King Philip the Fair of
France (1303). Under the heading ‘Reconquest of the Holy
Land ’, it advocates the setting up of a European League, under
the presidency of the King of France. This League would
have two objectives: first, to ensure permanent peace within
the Christian world, and, secondly, to rally the armed strength
of Europe for the reconquest of the Holy Land and the
Mediterranean. Only his contemporary Dante could challenge
Dubois’ claim to be the father of Pan-Europe. For, in his work
De Monorchia (1306), Dante makes a plea for a universal
monarchy under the Holy Roman Emperor.

The first attempt at putting Pan-Europe into practice came,
however, only a century and a half later, when Constantinople
had fallen and the victorious Turkish armies threatened Central
Europe. George Podiebrad, a famous King of Bohemia, took
it upon himself to suggest a federation of European states for
the defence of the Continent and the preservation of peace.
Having convinced the kings of Poland and Hungary of the

THE PUZZLE THAT WAS EUROPE 01

merits of his plan, he sent a delegation representing all three
countries to Paris in 1464 to ask King Louis XI of France
whether he would to assume leadership of a European
Peace League. The mission returned without achieving its
aim.

A famous plan for Pan-Europe is also associated with the
name of King Henry IV of France; the so-called ‘Grand
Design’. This plan had been designed by the Due de Sully,
King Henry’s personal adviser. It too provided for the con¬
quest of North Africa by a European army of some two
hundred thousand men.

From that time onwards many writers and statesmen began
to support the idea of Pan-Europe. Its greatest protagonist
in the eighteenth century was the Abbe de St. Pierre. He had
two great philosophers as his disciples: Jean-Jacques Rousseau
and Immanuel Kant. In the nineteenth century it was Napoleon
who first endeavoured to unite Europe by force of arms;
after his fall, the Holy Alliance created a Pan-Europe of
Sovereigns for the prevention of wars and revolutions. Finally,
in 1834, Mazzini founded Young Europe, a movement
designed to co-ordinate all existing revolutionary movements
with a view to building up a new and united Europe on a
basis of nationalism and democracy.

The collapse of this movement in the year 1849 marked also
the decline of the idea of European unification, whose last great
protagonist in those days was the poet Victor Hugo. After
the Franco-Prussian War and the deep split which this created
between the two leading nations on the Continent, the prospect
of a united Europe seemed, for the time being, hopeless.

My first article on ‘The European Question’* appeared in
the summer of 1922 in the Berlin Vossische ^eitmg and the
Vienna Neue Freie Presse. Both papers subsequently published
an appeal to supporters of the United States of Europe to
join the Pan-European Union, then in process of formation.
Fifty-one applications were received, mainly from visionaries
and cranks.

’ Reprinted in Krisis der Weltanschauung, Paneuropa Verlag, 1924.

92 AN IDEA CONQUERS THE WORLD

Soon afterwards Mussolini assumed control of the Italian
government. The line of his foreign policy was still uncertain.
Mussolini, formerly socialist, pacifist and internationalist, was
known to have become a fanatical nationalist. Would it not
be possible to win over this disciple of Nietzsche to the European
idea and to harness the dynamism of his Italian Youth Move¬
ment to our own great mission? Mazzini’s tradition was not
yet dead: for Italians, there was no essential contradiction
between allegiance to Italy and allegiance to Europe. Italy had
always been greatest when she was most European: in the days
of its Caesars and of its great Popes. If Mussolini could be won
over to the idea of Pan-Europe, he would be the ideal mediator
between France and Germany, and Pan-Europe might yet be
established on governmental initiative.

Without hesitating, as I had done in the days of Wilson,
I wrote the following letter to Benito Mussolini:

In the name of European Youth I appeal to you to save Europe.

Two of the three great nations which emerged from the Carol-
ingian Empire, the German and the French, have been locked in
battle for over a thousand years. It would seem that the third, a
great and united Italy, is now called upon to settle the hereditary
feud between these sister-nations and to pave the way not only for
the recovery, but also for the unification and regeneration of the
European continent.

You love Italy. You are seeking to promote its growth and develop¬
ment. But no European nation can live, let alone prosper, if the
continent around it is moribund. Only in a healthy Europe can
Italy hope to prosper—in a diseased continent, it is boimd to
wither away. Whoever loves his people today must also love
Europe. As a good Italian, you arc bound also to be a good
European, just as the best Italian of the last century, Giuseppe
Mazzini, was also the best European.

I would ask you to cast your eyes across the ocean. While
Europe, from the Rhine to the Adriatic, is tearing herself to pieces,
while her standard of living is constantly sinking and her misery,
her resentments and her debts constantly mounting—while all this
is happening before our eyes, a whole continent will shortly be
meeting in the other hemisphere to promote its Pan-American Union
in a spirit of confidence and hope and in the service of peace and
progress.

THE PUZZLE THAT WAS EUROPE 93

The Pan-American idea, proclaimed by Bolivar a century ago,
has today become one of the focal points of world development.
A united America leads the world, whilst Europe bleeds to death
from the wounds of its internal conflicts.

Do not put up with this misery and disgrace any longer. Convene
the first Pan-European Conference to Rome, while Pan-America
still meets at Santiago di Chile. Let Rome, once the capital of
imperial and papal Extfope, be the starting point of a new
Europe now.

By changing its whole structure, Britain has developed from a
European into a world power, whilst Russia has become a power
primarily in Eurasia. Both have outgrown Europe and could survive
its eclipse. But the remaining nations face a common destiny and
for them the choice is between federalism and annihilation.

I appeal to you to convene, in collaboration with all those
governments who have a feeling of responsibility for the future of
their continent, a meeting of the democratic states of Europe to
arrive at a fair settlement of the Franco-German dispute and to
found the union of Pan-Europe.

A hundred years later than America, Europe must proclaim its
own Monroe Doctrine: Europe for the Europeans!

The future of Pan-Europe calls for the closest understanding
between the Continent and its British neighbour; compulsory
arbitration procedure and disarmament at sea and in the air
would be a reasonable price to pay for Britain’s consent and
friendship.

The threat to Europe’s safety does not lie in the north; economi¬
cally, it lies in the west—politically, in the east. A dismembered
Europe would be defenceless against American competition and
Russian expansionism. Only by means of full economic union,
based on a firm political alliance and a general readiness to submit
disputes to arbitration, can the prosperity, the peace and the
independence of the Continent be guaranteed in the long run.

As heir to Marius and Caesar, you, sir, have the power to post¬
pone this new upheaval for many centuries. For it will depend
largely on your attitude in this present crisis whether Europe is
in future to confront Eurasia on the line of the Dniester and the
Rokitno Swamps—or on that of the Rhine and the Alps.

For, if a succession of good harvests should enable Russia to pull
out of her present plight before Europe has achieved unity, we may
all live to see Cossack horsemen watering their mounts in the
Adriatic and the cultural heritage of the Latin peoples will once
again be submerged in a vast invasion.

94 an idea conq,uers the world

Ancient Greece perished because the idea of pan-Hellenism was
conceived too late. Save Europe from the fate of Greece by making
a decisive intervention in this crisis. By doing so, you will lay the
foundations of a United States of Europe.

Thus shall your memory be blessed and your name become
immortal!

My letter appeared in the Neue Freie Presse. But no answer
came from Mussolini. My last attempt to launch Pan-Europe
through govermental action had failed.

Early in 1923 I retired for a few weeks to a friend’s castle in
Upper Austria and there wrote a book entitled Pan-Europe and
dedicated to European youth.

The book opens with these words:

The aim of this book is to awaken a great political ideal which at
present lies dormant in the minds of almost all Europeans.

Most people have visions of a united Europe, but only a select
few possess the determination to create it. If we are content to let
the Pan-European ideal remain wishful thinking, it will never bear
fruit; but if we make it the aim of all our striving, it will produce
results more quickly than we now dare anticipate.

The only power in the world which can make a reality of Pan-
Europe is the collective will of the European peoples themselves.
But if this will is used negatively, it can just as easily destroy
Europe altogether.

Thus every European carries a share of the world’s fate in his
own hands.

Europe’s decline has political rather than biological causes.

If Europe perishes it will not be because of old age; it will be
because its nations are doing their best to exterminate each
other with all the resources of modem science.

In a qualitative sense, Europe is still the most fertile reservoir
of manpower in the world. The rapidly developing continent of
America is European by origin: its people only operate a different
political system. This alone should show that it is not the peoples
of Europe who suffer from old age, but their political system. To
change this system radically cannot but lead to the complete
regeneration of our sick continent.

The World War has changed the political map of Europe but
not its political system. International anarchy continues to hold
sway as hitherto. Wherever one looks, might prevaik over right,
peace treaties turn out to be mere armistice arrangements, economies

THE PUZZLE THAT WAS EUROPE 95

arc disintegrating and political intrigue is rife. Europe’s politics
today have more in common with the politics of yesterday than
with those of tomorrow.

Europe seems to be concerned with its past much more than with
its future.

New books are mainly about olden times. Public discussion centres
around the causes of the last war and hardly ever touches on the
possibilities of avoiding the next.

This obsession with the past is one of the chief causes of European
reaction and disintegration. Europe’s youth is in duty bound to
change this condition radically and to erect a new Europe on the
ruins of the old, a European organisation to fill the void left by
European anarchy.

If the statesmen of Europe refuse to recognize this necessity and
bring about the unification of the continent, then the peoples with
whose future they are trifling will almost certainly sweep them from
their positions.

Our continent is burdened with the solution of two burning
problems: the social problem and the European problem. The first
is the problem of the division between classes, the second that of the
division between sovereign states.

It is right that public discussion should be concerned with the
social problem. On this parties are formed and divided, and not
a day passes on which the attention of public opinion in every
country is not drawn to it in at least a thousand ways.

By contrast, the European problem, though of equal importance,
seems to be dominated by a conspiracy of silence. Many people
have never even heard of the existence of the problem. Generally
it is conceived of as a product of literature and wishful thinking—
hardly ever as a serious proposition.

Yet on the solution of this problem will depend the future not
only of Western culture, but of the whole human race.

"The question which calls for an answer is this;

‘ Will it be possible for Europe, in its state of political and economic
disunity, to preserve its peace and independence in the face ofthe grow¬
ing strength of the extra-European world powers—or will Europe’s
preservation be conditional upon the formation of a federation?’

To put this question is to answer it. Hence it is more often sup¬
pressed than put.

There is a great deal of discussion nowadays on all kinds of
European problems, but litde attention is paid to the one central
problem on which all others hinge—just as most social problems
hinge on one major question at the centre.

96 AN IDEA CONQUERS THE WORLD

Today no European can avoid taking up a position on social
questions in his own country. He should now be compelled like¬
wise, in the field of foreign affairs, to take up a definite stand on the
European question. It will then be for the peoples of Europe to
decide whether they want to achieve unity or preserve their divisions,
whether they want to organize themselves or continue to live in
anarchy, whether they want to rise to new heights of achievement or
perish for ever.

Never again must a situation be allowed in which a vital question
affecting 300 million people is concealed firom them by those who
claim to be their responsible leaders.

It is time now for the European question to be placed squarely
before public opinion. To do so we must employ all the resources
of the press and of political literature; our forums must be political
meetings, parliaments and cabinets.

Time is short. Tomorrow it may be too late to solve the Euro¬
pean problem. We must therefore begin working on it without
delay.

To succeed in unifying Europe we must not only act; we must also
act quickly. For the speed of our action will determine whether
the Europe of our creating is to be a federation of states or a federa¬
tion of ruins. The essence of Pan-Europe is self-help on a collective
basis towards common political and economic objectives.

In some quarters Pan-Europe is regarded as an unrealistic
project. This criticism has no basis of fact. No known law of nature
stands in the way of Pan-Europe’s realization. The project cor¬
responds to the broad interests of an overwhelming majority of
the peoples of Europe; only an insignificant minority will be adver¬
sely affected by it.

This small but influential minority, in whose hands the fate of
Europe rests for the time being, tries hard to discredit the Pan-
European project by labelling it a ‘Utopia’. The fact of the matter
is that every great development in history began as a Utopia and
ended as a reality.

In 1913 the Polish and Czech republics were Utopias; in 1918
both had become realities. In 1916 a Communist victory in Russia
was a fantastic dream; one year later it had become an incontestable
fact. The more a politician lacks initiative, the greater the realm of
fantasy will seem to him and the smaller the realm of possibility.
It is a fact that the history of the world has always displayed a
greater degree of imagination than the figures appearing in it; it
seems composed of a chain of surprises, of Utopias unexpectedly
come true.

THE PUZZLE THAT WAS EUROPE 97

Whether an idea remains a Utopia or advances into the realm
of reality depends largely on the number and effectiveness of its
supporters. As long as the supporters of Pan-Europe are counted
only in thousands, the project remains a Utopia; once millions rally
to it, it will become known as a political programme; and when the
number of its supporters swells into hundreds of millions, it will no
doubt become a reality.

The future of Pan-Europe therefore depends on whether the
thousands who now believe in it possess sufficient faith and are
equipped with sufficient means of propaganda to persuade the
remaining millions of the importance of their cause; if they succeed
in doing this, yesterday's Utopia may well become tomorrow’s
reality.

I call upon the youth of Europe to accomplish this great and
decisive task!

CHAPTER XI

I START A MOVEMENT

My book Pan-Europe appeared in the first days of October 1923
under the auspices ofour own publishing house—the Paneuropa-
V erlag—which we had established in Vienna a few months earlier.

The idea of starting an independent publishing house had
intrigued me for some time. My mind was finally made up
when, during the German inflation, my entire receipts from the
firm which published my pamphlet Aristocracy amounted to five
free copies of the pamphlet. No other publishing house was likely
to produce the thousands of propaganda leaflets needed for the
rapid dissemination of our ideas. The Paneuropa-Verlag thus
came to be the backbone of our whole movement—without
recourse either to subsidies or to outside financial help.

Each copy of my book contained a card, addressed to me,
on which were printed the words: ‘ I wish to become a member
of the Pan-European Union.’ More than a thousand mem¬
bers were enrolled in the first month alone, and henceforth
every mail brought a mass of new applications.

I chose the sign of the red cross superimposed on a golden
sun as the emblem of our movement. The red cross, which
had been the flag of the medieval crusaders, seemed the oldest
known symbol of supra-national European brotherhood. In
more recent times it has also gained recognition as a symbol of
international relief work. The sun was chosen to represent
the achievements of European culture in helping to illuminate
the world. Thus, Hellenism and Christianity—the cross of
Christ and the sun of Apollo—figured side by side as the twin
enduring pillars of European civilization.

For our motto I selected the fine phrase attributed to St. Augus¬
tine: ‘In necessariis unitas—in dubiis libertas—in omnibus
caritas.’i

* ‘In essentials—unity; in matters of opinion—^freedom; in all things—good will
and good deeds.’

I START A MOVEMENT

99

As we had not provided for a subscription fee, the Union
soon had many members but no funds. Early in 1924 Baron
Louis Rothschild telephoned to say that a friend of his, Max
Warburg of Hamburg, had read my book and wanted to
meet us. To my great astonishment, Warburg immediately
offered a donation of sixty thousand gold-marks to see the
movement through its first three years. I suggested that this
donation might be divided equally between Germany and
Austria. We agreed on the appointment of two trustees:
Geheimrat Fritsch of the Dresdner Bank for the German
tranche and Vice-President Broschc of the Kreditanstalt for
the Austrian tranche.

Max Warburg, a man of outstanding character and intelli¬
gence, was fond of giving financial assistance to movements
with whose aims he found himself in sympathy; but he gave
such assistance only in the initial stages, taking the view that,
once they had been launched, the movements should become
financially self-supporting. Though he was a staunch supporter
of Pan-Europe all his life and we remained close friends until
he died in 1946, he gave the movement no further financial
assistance in its later stages. However, his readiness to support
it at the outset contributed decisively to its subsequent success.

Our central office was housed in a large and impressive-
looking apartment which the Austrian Government obligingly
placed at our disposal in the former imperial residence. From then
onwards, our address was Pan-Europe, Imperial Palace, Vienna.

Our project soon captured the imagination of the Viennese.
The erstwhile metropolis of a large polyglot empire had not
entirely lost its international outlook. Despite wars and revolu¬
tions, the character of the city and of its inhabitants remained
distinctly European. In an economic sense, the customs bar¬
riers which had arisen on all sides dealt a mortal blow to the
prosperity of the city. There was not a country in Europe in
which the new protectionist system was more sincerely abomin¬
ated than here. The creation of a free market between its
neighbours thus seemed to the Viennese an ideal worth a great
amount of effort and struggle.

lOO AN IDEA CONQ,UERS THE WORLD

Ten years earlier Vienna had rivalled Paris for glamour
and good living. Now the city lay plunged in deep distress.
Gone was the power of imperial days; the currency had fallen
to between one thousandth and one ten-thousandth of its
former value; the aristocracy and the middle classes were for
the most part destitute; and in their places black marketeers
and speculators displayed newly gotten wealth in an osten¬
tatious and tasteless manner.

The hinterland of Vienna being too small and too poor to
feed the city’s large population, the idea of a merger with
Weimar Germany tended to find increasing support among
the Viennese. In a way, this awareness of the economic con¬
sequences of protectionism helped our movement, since every¬
one came quickly to recognize the senselessness of the policies
hitherto pursued and began to hope for a peaceful but funda¬
mental revision of the entire European system.

In those days a private plebiscite was held in Salzburg to
sound public opinion about the ‘Anschluss’ with Germany.
Ninety-nine per cent of all votes were cast for the ‘Anschluss’
and only one per cent against. Those who voted against were
almost exclusively customs officials and their families. In later
years I was often reminded of this incident when I came up
against stubborn resistance to Pan-Europe in diplomatic circles.

The Vienna newspapers backed our movement whole¬
heartedly from the start. This was due largely to the initiative
of the Neue Freie Presse whose editor, Dr. Ernst Benedikt, and
his wife were good friends of ours. My articles on cultural ques¬
tions had already brought me into the limelight, whilst Ida
Roland gained considerable publicity as a result of the con¬
tract which the Burgtheater had just given her. The negotia¬
tions leading up to this contract had proved difficult, since
the Burgtheater made a point of never engaging ‘stars’ in
their own right; they agreed, however, to make an exception
in her case.

There were at that time two major political parties in Austria:
the Christian Social Party and the Social Democratic Party.
There was also a third and smaller party, the Pan-Germans.

I START A MOVEMENT lOI

The Christian Social Party was led by an outstanding states¬
man, Monsignor Dr. Ignaz Seipel. By his ascetic and puritan¬
ical way of life, his upright character, his uncommon intelligence
and his impressive features—which gave him the appearance
of a Roman Emperor—Dr. Seipel had won universal respect
and authority. Next to the Pojje, he was acknowledged to be
Europe’s most distinguished and outstanding priest, his fame
extending far beyond the frontiers of Austria. Free from all
traces of nationalistic bias, he had the broad international
outlook of a high-priest of the Catholic Church.

Chancellor Seipel, who had read my book, gave me a very
cordial reception. I had no need to convince him of the im¬
portance of Pan-Europe. To his question, what he could do
for the cause of Pan-Europe, I replied that I would be happy
if he consented to become chairman of our Austrian committee.
I expected that this suggestion would meet with a polite
refusal. To my amazement and great joy, Seipel accepted.
He advised me to try and get a leading Socialist and a leading
representative of the Pan-German Party to serve as vice-chair¬
men; in this manner, the movement would be kept from the
start out of the controversial domain of party politics.

This advice proved difficult to follow, because Socialists as
well as Pan-Gcrmans were committed to the ‘ Anschluss ’ pro¬
gramme. A new formula had to be found which would satisfy the
protagonists of the ‘ Anschluss ’ as well as those who opposed it.

Among the Socialist leaders. Dr. Karl Renner, the late
President of the Austrian Republic and former Minister of
Foreign Affairs, had always been known as a supporter of the
federalist idea. By reason of his great knowledge and wide
experience, Renner was bound to display a sympathetic
attitude towards the European problem. When I called on him,
it did not take us long to come to the point. I explained that
so far as Austria was concerned, Pan-Europe would mean ‘all-
round Anschluss’ as distinct from ‘Anschluss’ with Germany
alone; Pan-Europe would bring down tariff walls not only
between Austria and Germany, but also between Austria and
all the succession states.

102 AN IDEA CONQ.UERS THE WORLD

This formula appealed to Renner, who was at that very
moment working on the problem of improving relations
between Vienna and Prague, and he agreed to serve as vice-
chairman of the Austrian committee. Once a precedent had
thus been set, I had little difficulty in persuading the leader
of the Pan-Germans, Vice-Chancellor Dr. Dinghofer, to accept
the remaining vice-chairmanship.

The official support which the movement had thus received
from two internationally recognized leaders, one of political
Catholicism, the other of Socialism, was of deckive import¬
ance. In the first place, the idea of Pan-Europe began to be
taken seriously. Both Seipel and Renner had the reputation
of being political realists. Through Seipel’s support, the move¬
ment soon acquired a firm footing in the Catholic world;
through Renner’s support, it spread likewise throughout the
world of international Socialism. The mere mention of Scipcl’s
name often sufficed to persuade a vacillating Catholic leader to
join a national committee; similarly, it was only necessary
to point to Renner’s support in order to prove convincingly
that the aims of the movement were not in conflict with those
of the Second International.

Thus Vienna, having been the cradle of the movement, now
became its Mecca. The Viennese took pride at having launched
and acting as hosts to this international movement. They
hoped that one day Vienna might become the federal capital
of a united Europe. Everywhere in the streets of Vienna, men
and women were seen displaying the buttonhole emblem of
Pan-Europe.

In April 1924 the first issue of our new periodical, Pan-
Europe, reached the bookstalls. It contained an article called
‘The European Manifesto’.' Our publicity office worked day
and night; thousands of circulars, leaflets and books were dis¬
patched to every country in Europe and newspaper cuttings
in many languages about Pan-Europe as well as new applica¬
tions for membership continued to pour in daily.

Publishing houses aU over the world soon began to apply

‘ First pubUshed in Kampf urn Paneuropa, Vol. i, Paneuropa-Verlag, Vienna.

I START A MOVEMENT IO 3

for the right to publish my book in their own languages. I
granted many of these applications on condition that a member¬
ship application form in the appropriate language would be
enclosed with each copy sold. The book soon found a market
even outside Europe: there was a Japanese edition and an
edition in Esperanto. Russian and Italian were the only two
important European languages in which the book did not
appear.

Since the book was first published in German, most of our
original members were Germans and Austrians. There was
some danger lest this predominance of German-speaking
members might cause the movement to be looked upon—and
resented—as an attempt to sabotage the Treaty of Versailles.
To counter this danger in time, we had to gain a firm footing
quickly in at least one of the Entente states.

Paris seemed at the time hopeless. For one thing, Pan-
Europe had not yet appeared in French; besides, Poincare’s
Government was firmly in the saddle. There was, however,
one route which could indirectly lead us to Paris via
Prague.

I tried, therefore, on the strength of my Gzech nationality,
to obtain the blessing of the Prague Government for our move¬
ment. Masaryk, to whom I had dedicated one of the first
copies of my book, promised help. He introduced me to his
friend and Foreign Minister, Eduard Benc§, who immediately
received me with great cordiality. After Masaryk, BeneS was
the leading citizen of the Republic and one of the most respected
public men in Europe. His outstanding intelligence had made
him an acknowledged leader of the Little Entente and a great
figure in international politics.

Unlike Masaryk, ^nc 5 was not a genuine European.
Fundamentally, he was a Gzech nationalist, but his nationalism
was of the enlightened, not the narrow-minded type. He spoke
the language of Pan-Europe because he believed that to do so
was good for his country. But he had no intention of sacrificing
a single Czech interest on the altar of European unity. His
aim, in brief, was to gain for Czechoslovakia all the benefits

104 an idea conquers the world

of a Pan-European policy, whilst incurring a minimum of
the obligations which such a policy entailed. In consequence,
his attitude towards our movement for the next few years
tended to be ambiguous: in theory he was a Pan-European,
but in practice a Czech nationalist. He favoured a collective
guarantee of Czechoslovakia’s frontiers, but he opposed effec¬
tive protection of the German minorities. He favoured the dis¬
mantling of customs barriers towards Eastern Europe so as to
widen the market for Czech goods, but he opposed customs
union with Germany for fear of competition from that quarter.

Whilst I had all my conversations with Masaryk in German,

I invariably talked to BeneS in French. He himself spoke
French with a strong Czech accent, but was proud of his com¬
mand of the French language. He met all my proposals with
the stereotyped reply 'Je suis entierement d’accord avec vous,
mais. . . . ’ Only after he had made this introductory gambit
did he give me his real views, which often conflicted sharply
with my proposals.

He believed in the eventual establishment of a European
Federation, but doubted whether it could be achieved in the
short run. Oddly enough, it was this doubt which induced
him to give his support to our project. Had he believed in its
immediate realization, he would probably have opposed it.

He was impressed by the fact that Seipel and Renner had
come out openly in support of Pan-Europe. He wished on no
account to appear less European-minded than they. He
therefore accepted the honorary chairmanship of the Czech
committee and wrote an excellent preface for the Czech edition
of Pan-Europe. He played an active part in the committee’s
formation and secured for it the co-operation of outstanding
politicians of Czech and German descent. He also furnished
me with a diplomatic passport which stood me in excellent
stead on my various journeys.

In subsequent years Bene§ and I often met in Prague,
Geneva, Paris, London and New York; our personal relations
remained excellent, despite frequent differences of opinion
on various subjects. I always enjoyed my conversations with

I START A MOVEMENT IO5

this exceptionally gifted man, whose one great fault was that
he thought himself to be even more intelligent than he was.
His support proved of great value to me, since it opened many
doors in France and other Entente states, and thus helped me
overcome the double handicap of my Austrian origin and my
German mother-tongue.

At the beginning of October 1924 I was invited to attend
the International Congress of Pacifists in Berlin. The question
of Pan-Europe was one of the principal points on the Congress
agenda. After the address, which I was asked to deliver, there
followed a dramatic debate. Many of the older pacifists re¬
garded Pan-Europe as rank heresy—a prelude to a kind of
continental imperialism—and winced at the very mention of a
European military alliance. They were even more sharply
opposed to my thesis that personal freedom must in the final
analysis take precedence over peace and that, sooner or later,
all nations wWch are not ready to fight tyranny must succumb
to it in one form or another. Some of the younger pacifists
came out openly for Pan-Europe; they proved, however, to
be in a definite minority.

Shortly after this congress, I published a pamphlet entitled
Pacifism.^ I summarized my impressions in one sentence: ‘Those
who do most harm to the cause of pacifism are the pacifists
themselves.’ Since that date relations between the pacifist
movement and Pan-Europe have been somewhat cool.

The following three months we spent in Berlin where con¬
siderable interest began to focus on the Pan-European pro¬
ject. Germany was clearly looking for a new political orien¬
tation. Extremists on both right and left looked to Russia,
hoping for revenge or revolution or both. The parties of the
centre were, however, seeking a formula which would allow
them to reach agreement with France; they hoped to have
found such a formula in Pan-Europe. The movement thus
found support in the right wing of the social Democratic
Party, among most Democrats and Centre Party men as well

1 The pamphlet was published in an anthology, called Praktischer Idealismus,
Paneuropa-Verlag, Vienna.

I06 AN IDEA CONQUERS THE WORLD

as on the left wing of the People’s Party. The movement also
had the support of most Berlin newspapers—from Vorwdrts
to the Deutsche Allgemeine J^eitung. In the circumstances it proved
easy to form a German national committee. Its chairmanship
was accepted by Paul Loebe, then President of the Reichstag.

Loebe was one of the most charming and popular figures
in Germany. In general appearance and character he had
much in common with the Swiss. Being a genuine Democrat,
he respected the views of others, even when these were directly
opposed to his own social-democratic convictions. His broad
tolerance enabled him to succeed exceptionally well as Reich¬
stag President. Like Renner, he was a protagonist of the
Anschluss; like Renner, too, he was at the same time a good
European.

Erich Koch-Weser, the President of the Democratic Party,
became vice-chairman of our German committee. Another
Democrat who supported Pan-Europe was Dr. Hjalmar
Schacht, whose action—as President of the Reichsbank—in
suppressing inflation and stabilizing the market had gained him
great popularity throughout Germany. At our first meeting in
the Reichstag building, Schacht made the principal speech.

Among our supporters in the Centre Party were ex-
Chancellors Marx and Wirth, Dr. Adenauer, Mayor of
Cologne, and Monsignor Kaas. In the People’s Party we could
count on von Raumcr as well as on von Kardorf and his wife,
whilst in the Bavarian People’s Party our principal supporter
was Count Lerchenfeld, and in the National Party Professor
Hoetzsch.

As our first executive vice-president we selected Major
Joseph Koeth; he was later succeeded by Dr. Herman MUnch.
The finances of the committee were looked after first by Dr.
Arthur von Gwinner of the Deutsche Bank and subsequently
by Hans Ftirstenberg of the Berliner Handclsgcsellschaft.

Our most active publicist in Germany was Georg Bernhard,
who edited the Vossische Z^itung. This paper practically became
the organ of the German Pan-Europe Movement.

Dr. Gustav Stresemann was at that time the unchallenged

1 START A MOVEMENT 107

leader of German foreign policy. Like BeneS he was an
enlightened nationalist. It was clear to him that Germany,
weak as it was, had to play the card of Pan-Europe. Fearing
the impression which such a step might create in Russia and
England, Stresemann never officially joined our movement,
but, behind the scenes, he was one of our most active sup¬
porters. After our meeting in the Chancellery, he made a
note in his diary: ‘Herr Coudenhove-Kalergi called on me
today; his project for Pan-Europe is making good progress.
Whatever one may think of him, there is no denying that he is
a man of exceptional knowledge and remarkable energy. I
am convinced that he will one day play an important role.’‘

The European centre of the Carnegie Endowment invited
me to deliver a lecture in Paris at the beginning of January
1925 under the chairmanship of Paul Appell, the distinguished
rector of the Sorbonne.

On New Year’s Eve we left Berlin on our first visit to Paris—
then in a very real sense the capital of Europe—and our hearts
were full of hope and expectation. I had on me five letters of
introduction to smooth my path with French politicians.
They had been given me by BeneS. Couched in very cordial
terms, the letters were addressed to his best friends in France:
to the former Prime Minister, Paul Painleve; to the Minister
of Reconstruction, Louis Loucheur; to the editor of Le Matin,
Henri de Jouvenel, to the former Prime Minister, Aristide
Briand; and to the Socialist leader, Paul Boncour.

The letters had a magic effect. BeneS being considered a
most reliable friend of France, his introductions assured me a
cordial welcome. I made my debut in Paris not as a German
writer but as a citizen of an Entente state, personally intro¬
duced by one of France’s staunchest allies. Painleve, Loucheur,
de Jouvenel and Paul Boncour received me cordially and
promised their full support to the movement. In the years
which followed, they amply fulfilled this promise and contri¬
buted later to Briand’s Pan-European initiative. Briand himself
was not available at the time; he was at his home in Cocherel,
* Stresemam’s Vemdehtnis, Volume II, Part II.

I08 AN IDEA CONQUERS THE WORLD

some distance from Paris. I had therefore to wait for my first
meeting with him.

Among the many personalities I met at the time, the one
who made the strongest impression on me was Joseph Caillaux.
His penetrating intelligence, coupled with exceptional energy,
made him a born leader. He was also a genuine European, far
above national prejudice. Unfortunately, a proud and arro¬
gant manner prevented him from concluding those friendships
which are so essential for a successful parliamentary career.
As far as our movement was concerned, he remained a constant
hope never to be fulfilled.

While in Paris I also met Francesco Nitti, the former Prime
Minister of Italy. Like Caillaux, Nitti was a fighter for Pan-
Europe; a thorough anti-Fascist, he lived in exile in Paris,
waiting for the overthrow of Mussolini. To his sarcastic mind,
the men who had drawn up the Treaty of Versailles and those
European statesmen who in their blindness now paved the way
for a second world war, were all cither idiots, lunatics or
criminals. Obviously, this view was somewhat exaggerated.

France’s leading politician at the time was Edouard Herriot,
who held office jointly as Prime Minister and Minister of
Foreign Affairs. A few months earlier he had triumphed at
the polls over the former Nationalist majority of Poincare. He
was reputed to stand for peace and international under¬
standing.

Immediately after the elections I addressed an open letter^
to all members of the new French Parliament. In this letter
I appealed to them to work for Pan-Europe so as to bring
about reconciliation with Germany and avoid a second world
war. I received several positive answers—which led me to
hope that the psychological moment might have come to win
France over to the cause of Pan-Europc.

Herriot received me quite informally, like an old friend.
In fact the interview took place in his bedroom, while he was
changing for an official dinner. I was deeply impressed by
the warmth of his manner, his kindness and the poetic and
’ See Kampf urn Paneuropa, Volume i, Paneuropa-Verlag, Vienna.

I START A MOVEMENT IO 9

almost childlike quality of his being. In talking to him, one
has the feeling that the noblest ideals of the French Revolution
have somehow survived within him. Beyond the problems of
the hour, he managed to dream of a better world of liberty,
equality, fraternity. Being more inclined towards the arts and
sciences than towards politics, he entered the latter profession
only to help achieve the better world of which he dreamt.
This charming and lovable man never ceased to be conscious
of his great personal responsibility for the fate of Europe and
of humanity.

Herriot was fully informed about my ideas and plans by
his principal secretary, R. R. Lambert, who had read my book
while serving in the army of occupation in the Rhineland and
had become a member of our Union. Herriot, too, seems to
have been impressed by our conversation, for in his book
entitled The United States of Europe, he wrote several years later
as follows:

A large proportion of the best elements amongst European youth
today are setting themselves the task of translating Kant’s great
theories into action. The man whose merit it is to be the leader of
this intellectual group, and who in recent years has wholeheartedly
devoted his talents to the cause of European federation, is Count
Richard N. Coudenhove-Kalergi.

Count Coudenhove formulates his theories in a number of works
which are the best handbooks today for the supporter of Pan-Europe:
his precision and clarity cannot be too highly praised.

I left Herriot, convinced that I had found at last the states¬
man whose courage and imagination would put our project
on the map. Nor was I proved wrong, for Herriot soon
appealed openly for the United States of Europe—the first
European statesman to do so while serving as head of his own
national government. A few days after our talk, on 25th
January, Herriot said in a great speech in the Chamber:

Europe is hardly more than a small district of the world. Is it not
time, therefore, that we dropped some of our arrogance? Far away
in the Pacific Ocean problems are now arising which will probably

no AN IDEA CONQ,UERS THE WORLD

call in the near future for a co-operative effort on the part of
the United States of Europe; their collective power, their will to
work, their scientific knowledge and their technical experience must
be available to carry an element of reason into those parts of the
world which are still under the domination of instinct.

My greatest wish is that I may yet live to see the creation of the
United States of Europe.

And if you ask me why I support the League of Nations with so
much courage—I feel entitled to use this word—my answer is:
because in that institution I see the first step toward a United States
of Europe.

In conclusion, I would like to say only this: there are nations
on this earth which simply must learn to live together because only
by so doing can they hope to survive.

This speech, loudly cheered by the Chamber, was the first
official approval of the ideal of Pan-Europe. Many who had
previously treated the project with scepticism now came to
regard it more seriously; it was no small matter for the head
of the French Government to put on record his official support
for the United States of Europe. I expected an immediate
answer from Stresemann; but I waited in vain, for no official
echo came back from Berlin.

I went to Berlin to see Chancellor Marx and explain to him
the great opportunity which German foreign policy was
missing. As Stresemann was away, Marx advised me to talk
to Secretary of State von Maltzan. This intelligent diplomat,
who later became the victim of an air-crash, grasped my
meaning at once. A few days later the Frankfurter Anzeiger
published an article signed by Stresemann and containing a
positive reply to Herriot’s speech. The Pan-European dialogue
between Paris and Berlin had begun.

Italy had by that time veered over to a distinctly nationalistic
tack. I gave up hope of convincing Mussolini. But I was
anxious to sow the seed of Pan-Europe on Italian soil in prepa¬
ration for the democratic regime which would sooner or later
take the place of the present Fascist one. We therefore made a
trip to Florence, Rome and Naples to establish contact with
those elements in the country which had a genuinely European

I START A MOVEMENT III

outlook and which would eventually regain their former
influence.

The whole anti-Fascist intelligentsia turned out to be
enthusiastic for the idea of Pan-Europe, which they regarded
as their one great hope of a brighter future. Benedetto Croce,
Guglielmo Ferrero, Gaetano Salvemini, Guido Manacorda,
were all good Europeans. They felt as strongly as I did about
the need for a united Europe. So did the statesman of the
opposition parties, men like Giolitti, Bonomi, Cesaro di
Colonna, Carlo Schanzer, Albertini and Amendola—who was
later to become a martyr for Italian freedom.

At the Foreign Ministry I saw Mussolini’s Secretary of State,
Contarini, a diplomat of outstanding intelligence. Though
openly sympathetic towards our cause, Contarini unfortunately
proved quite unable to influence Mussolini’s policy in this
respect.

Of all the Italian statesmen whom I met on this trip, none
impressed me as strongly as the former Foreign Minister, Carlo
Sforza. Though hated by Mussolini and constantly threatened
with arrest and worse, Sforza remained in Rome and, in his
capacity of Senator, took an active part in all Senate meetings.
It would be wrong to describe Sforza as an enlightened
nationalist, for he is clearly more than that: he is a genuine
European patriot, steeped in European culture and sentiment
and ready to place his country at the service of Europe. We
soon became friends. Sforza invited me to attend a Senate
meeting so that I would have a chance of observing Mussolini
at close quarters. I was amazed at the contrast between the
impressive-looking photographs and paintings which I had
previously seen of the Duce and his appearance in real life.
He had hardly anything in common with an ancient Roman.
He obviously found it hard to sit still and listen to boring
speeches by Senators. He impressed me as thoroughly restless
and much at the mercy of his nerves; he also showed signs of
irritability, probably due to overstrain. His well-shaped hands
were constantly on the move, his wide-open eyes seemed to
burn rather than shine and rolled ceaselessly to and fro. Lacking

112 AN IDEA CONQ,UERS THE WORLD

in balance, he seemed to be haunted by demons. Watch¬
ing him, it became clear to me why this man had two years
earlier left my open letter unanswered; what he was looking
for was not calm, but excitement; not peace, but war.

Before leaving Rome we were received by the great Pope,
Pius XI. After the audience I had a private talk with his old
Secretary of State, Cardinal Gasparri. I tried hard to obtain
from him some positive declaration on the subject of European
unity. He evaded my questions skilfully. Finally he began to
talk about South America—so as to break away altogether
from the dangerous topic of Europe. But from that day on¬
wards, the Vatican newspaper, Osservatore Romano, began to
adopt a friendly attitude towards Pan-Europe—in sharp con¬
trast to the snubs which we continued to receive from the
Fascist press.

During the next few months our journeys took us to Brussels,
Budapest and Warsaw. National groups of our movement were
constituted in Belgium, Hungary, Poland, Spain, Bulgaria,
Roumania, Yugoslavia, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

Within eighteen months the movement had struck firm
roots all over Europe. Among its active supporters we counted
not only the leading politicians of many nations and various
political parties but also the intellectual elite of the Continent:
poets and authors such as Paul Claudel, Paul Valery, Jules
Remains, Heinrich and Thomas Mann, Gerhart Hauptmann,
Stephan Zweig, Rainer Maria Rilke, Franz Werfel, Fritz von
Unruh, Emil Ludwig, Arthur Schnitzler, Sigmund Freud,
Selma Lagcrldf, Karin Michaelis and Albert Einstein; and
philosophers such as Ortega y Gasset and Miguel de Unamuno.
Many famous artists had also identified themselves with the
movement, chief among them the brilliant violinist Bronislav
Huberman, who canvassed the cause of Pan-Europe by lectures
and in his writings wherever his journeys took him.

Thanks to the political and intellectual support which we
received from these and other quarters, a powerful body of
opinion soon emerged in favour of the United States of Europe.

CHAPTER XII

CROSSING THE OCEAN

Our movement soon spread like wildfire throughout the Con¬
tinent. But it failed utterly to have an effect on the policies
pursued by the various nations.

After Herriot’s great speech I was full of hope that the
French Government would seize the initiative and convene a
full European conference. Only by such a bold step would it
have been possible to create a European Union on the model
of Pan-America. The hopes I had based on Herriot were soon
dashed. The collapse of the franc forced the resignation of his
government. In its place there came a national government
under Poincare.

The only other chance of realizing our project was by way
of the League of Nations. During 1924 the League’s bold
attempt to organize a world-wide system of collective security
ended in complete failure. France had supported the attempt,
but Great Britain was against it. In the circumstances,
there was much to be said for repeating the attempt on a
regional basis and thus laying the foundations of a united
Europe.

My first task was to convince the League Secretariat that
Pan-Europe and the League, far from being competitive
organizations, actually complemented one another; that there
were some problems of a world-wide character, some of a
more limited European and others of an exclusively national
character, and that for each type of problem one organization
should bo competent.

I drafted a memorandum,' which I addressed to the League
itself, containing the proposal that the League should hence¬
forth be organized on a regional basis and that it should provide
a meeting-place for representatives of the British Empire, of
Pan-America, of Pan-Europe, of China and of Japan. A further
* See Kampf urn Paiuuropa, Volume a, Paneuropa-Verlag, Vienna.

U3

II4 an idea conquers the world

seat at the council tabic would have to be kept open for the

Soviet Union.

Armed with this memorandum, I called in Geneva on the
Secretary-General of the League, Sir Eric Drummond. He
received me in the most friendly manner, but I was unable to
convince him of the soundness of my proposal. I always remem¬
ber his final words at the end of the interview: ‘Please don’t go
too fast.’ Sir Eric was a determined opponent of the regional
concept. Besides, as a British diplomat, he was obsessed by his
country’s traditional fear of continental union.

After my meeting with Drummond, I called on Albert
Thomas, the President of the International Labour Office.
Thomas’s attitude to Pan-Europe was as positive as Drum¬
mond’s had been negative. A Frenchman and a Socialist, he
was also a positive European. He joined our movement and
promised me every form of assistance. I cannot help feeling that
the fate of Europe and of the League might have taken a
different turn if Thomas had at the time been Secretary-General
instead of Drummond.

In spite of the failure of my Geneva mission, I remained hope¬
ful that a reform of the League on regional lines could be
brought about. The Secretariat was, after all, only the execu¬
tive organ of the League, while its actual policy was determined
in Downing Street and the Quai d’Orsay. If I could only
obtain the support of the British Government I felt sure that
the leaders of France would quickly and easily fall into line.

These thoughts led me to arrange a visit to London in the
spring of 1925. My aim was to convince the leading personalities
there that, as far as the Empire was concerned, only advantages
could accrue from a regional reform of the League. The formal
recognition of the Empire as a group within the League would
help to strengthen the imperial connections, and a united con¬
tinent, co-operating closely with Great Britain, could serve to
protect the British Isles against new aggressions. Moreover, the
existence of Pan-Europe seemed almost the only way of guard¬
ing against an eventual world hegemony by Russia or the
United States; in the place of the old balance of powers within

CROSSING THE OCEAN II 5

Europe, it would create a new balance embracing the entire
world and subject to the control of the League of Nations.

I had my firet talks with Wickham Steed, the former editor
of The Times. Few people in Britain were in a better position to
secure the necessary introductions for me. Steed was a man of
outstanding intelligence, with a gift for taking initiative in
political matten and a wide knowledge of European affairs.
He had earlier played a decisive role in the creation of the
Czech republic and was on terms of intimate friendship with
Masaryk and BcncS. Shortly after the war he gave up the
editorial chair of The Times and devoted himself to the publica¬
tion of the Review of Reviews, a journal which some months
earlier had published my memorandum to the League of
Nations.

Steed immediately put me in touch with the leading per¬
sonalities in the country, with Ramsay Macdonald, Sir Robert
Cecil, Lord Balfour, Lord Reading, Sir Robert Horne, Philip
Kerr, Gilbert Murray, Lionel Curtis, Bernard Shaw, H. G.
Wells and Sir Walter Layton. Only few of these men, such as
Wells, Shaw, Layton, Gilbert Murray and Robert Horne were
impressed by the aims of our movement. The majority, whilst
not lacking in personal friendliness towards me, expressed all
sorts of reservations in regard to the project. Though no one
actually opposed it, I met no leading Englishman who was
prepared to take the initiative in securing Britain’s support for
Pan-Europe.

Steed finally formed a preparatory committee, consisting of
representatives of all three political parties, which was to co¬
operate directly with the main body of our movement. He him¬
self agreed to serve on the committee; its other members were
Noel-Baker, representing the Labour Party, and Percy Molteno,
representing the Liberals.

Of all the personalities I met on this visit one alone turned
out to be of decisive importance to the future of our movement:
Colonel L. S. Amery,

Amcry is one of those rare men who combine great intel¬
lectual powers withaverymagnanimousdisposition. An intimate

Il6 AN IDEA CONQ,UERS THE WORLD

friendship soon developed between us and Amery became
one of my closest and most valued collaborators. As Secretary
of State for the Colonies, he played a decisive role in the
development of the Empire. A true Empire-builder, Amcry felt
equally at home in all continents and possessed an encyclo¬
paedic knowledge. His command of languages amazed me: he
was familiar with no fewer than sixteen. One of the keenest
and most constructive thinkers in the Empire, Amery had often
rendered invaluable services to his fatherland in times of crisis.
When war seemed imminent, he worked hard to secure uni¬
versal conscription and, once war had actually broken out, he
helped provoke the Cabinet change which led to the replace¬
ment of Chamberlain by Winston Churchill. A Secretary of
State for India in the War Cabinet, his was the credit for pre¬
venting a major revolution on the Indian sub-continent.

Ever since we first met, Amery has been a pioneer of Pan-
Europe in words as well as deeds. He never tired of pointing
out that the unification of the Continent, far from threatening
the position of the Empire, would actually confer great benefits
upon it; that the world was about to organize itself in large
groups and that Great Britain had more to gain from a united
than from a divided Europe.

Once Amery had identified himself with our movement, it
could no longer be held that its aims were in any way directed
against the interests of Great Britain. Such was Amery’s moral
and intellectual authority that this criticism was in fact never
voiced. But Amer>-’s foresight was unfortunately not shared by
the majority of his compatriots and at no time was positive
support forthcoming from them for the project of United
Europe.

It was Amery who succeeded in winning over to our cause
his old friend Winston Churchill, whom he had known ever
since they were at school together. Through this act, too, he
exercised decisive influence on the fate of our movement.

The movement’s rapid progress soon led to an awakening of
American interest in its aims. It was natural for Americans to
be attracted to a project aimed at healing Europe’s scars and

CROSSING THE OCEAN II7

creating a United States of Europe. On the other hand, there
seemed a slight danger that American opinion might look with
suspicion upon any attempt at economic integration. A con¬
tinent with a population three times that of the United States
and relatively low living standards might ultimately develop
into a powerful competitor and any steps to this end tended
therefore to be regarded with a certain apprehensiveness on the
part of the interests most directly threatened.

I realized the importance of dispelling these apprehensions
and misgivings at the outset and before they assumed real im¬
portance. By reason of its wealth and power, the United States
was in a position not only to delay the unification of Europe
but, if it so wished, even to prevent it altogether. We therefore
made up our minds to visit the United States in order to have
an opportunity of explaining to the leaders of American opinion
that, far from being directed against the security of the United
States, the creation of Pan-Europe actually corresponded to cer¬
tain vital interests of the Western hemisphere.

Max Warburg, in his usual friendly way, offered to make all
necessary preparations for our journey. Two of his brothers,
Felix Warburg, the well-known philanthropist, and Paul War¬
burg, the founder of the Federal Reserve System, had become
American citizens. Both were members of the Standing Com¬
mittee of the Foreign Policy Association, which organized lecture
tours in the United States for prominent Europeans. Through
the kind offices of the two Warburg brothers we received an
invitation to undertake a three months’ tour up and down the
country.

James Macdonald, the Director of the Foreign Policy Associ¬
ation, had some difficulty in finding a representative European
who would accompany us on our tour and present the argument
against Pan-Europe in our discussions. After a long search, he
selected Christian Lange, the Norwegian Nobel prizewinner
and Secretary-General of the International Peace Movement.

I met Lange in Geneva and at once congratulated myself
on having such an uncommonly attractive and loyal per¬
sonality as my opponent. He explained that his opposition to

Il8 AN IDEA CONQ,UERS THE WORLD

Pan-Europc was in no way fundamental, but rested mainly
on expediency. He thought it wrong to weaken the influence
of the strong paciflst element in the world by forcing it to choose
between support of the League of Nations and support of Pan-
Europe. For his part he preferred to direct this influence
exclusively towards strengthening the mechanism of the
League.

When I argued that the creation of Pan-Europe would
actually facilitate the admission of the United States and of
Soviet Russia to the League, he interrupted me with a smile:
‘Please don’t go on,’ he said, ‘for if, in the end, you succeed in
convincing me, I will have to cancel my American tour.’ In
America, Lange and I became inseparable travelling com¬
panions and close friends, and I often think of the long verbal
battles which we fought interminably before the members of
the Foreign Policy Association in the banquet-halls and dining¬
rooms of American luxury hotels.

After a -tormy crossing on the Berengaria, Idcl and I reached
New York on 24th October 1925. Our arrival could hardly
have been better timed: while we were at sea, the Locarno
Pact had been signed and the American press now acclaimed
this as the prelude to a more permanent reconciliation of the
countries of Europe.

From October until January we were almost continuously
on the move. Lectures, discussions, interviews and banquets
succeeded one another in extravagant confusion. Wherever we
went delightful hospitality awaited us. I held public lectures
in New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston, Washington,
Cincinnati as well as at several American universities.

Nearly all my lectures took the form of ‘luncheon speeches’.
Since for most men the luncheon hour is practically their only
spare hour in town—in the evenings they generally return to
their country homes—it has become the practice to combine
lecturing with lunch. The setting for these functions is usually
a vast hotel dining-room with a rostrum at one end. On this
rostrum there is a special table, facing the general public, at
which the speakers have their lunch together with the organizers

CROSSING THE OCEAN

"9

and various guests of honour. After a quick meal, the chairman
introduces the two speakers. One of them then makes a short
speech in support of the motion, whilst the other argues
equally briefly against it. The first speaker often adds a few
more words to put right any misunderstanding which may have
occurred. Then the discussion begins, everyone present being
entitled to put questions to the speaker from where he sits.
The questions are for the most part very blunt. Similarly,
American questioners like to receive short, concise answers to
their questions without elaborate verbal flourishes.

I found it easier than I had expected to dispel American
doubts about Pan-Europe. The United States was in the midst
of an almost unbelievable prosperity. As a result, no one was
seriously concerned at the thought of an impoverished Europe
competing, let alone competing successfully, in the commercial
field. As regards the practicability of the project, conclusive
evidence was close at hand that nationals of countries which
fought each other constantly in the Old World were capable
of living together peacefully in the New. Even the wave of anti-
German feeling which arose during the war had by now
completely vanished.

There was no need for me to explain to American audiences
the advantages of a united Continent over a divided one.
Everyone realized that in a United States of Europe lay the
only hope of solving the problems of that Continent. My main
task was therefore to explain why the countries of Europe still
did not follow the American example of forming themselves
into a federation. I also had to explain how it was possible to
run a highly industrialized economy in what seemed to them a
wild profusion of currencies and a labyrinth of customs barriers.

One reason why the idea of a United States of Europe
appealed so much to American opinion was that it implied a
recognition by the Old World of the superior political wisdom
of the new. In this way it did much to flatter American amour-
propre.

The United States was at that time divided politically into
isolationists, who opposed a policy of support for the League

120 AN IDEA CONQ,UERS THE WORLD

of Nations, and internationalists, who favoured such a policy.
To my surprise I found that both groups were favourably
inclined towards Pan-Europe: the isolationists looked upon
European federation as an effective safeguard against the risk
of entanglement in a new European war. The internationalists
were aware that the creation of Pan-Europe would facilitate
and hasten their entry into a regionally organized League. I
therefore had the curious experience of finding considerable
sympathy and understanding in the very circles where I had
expected to meet fierce opposition, notably among such men
as Senators Borah, Capper and Shipstead.

Whilst in Washington I also established friendly relations
with the Pan-American Union and with its director, Mr. Rowe.
These relations were subsequently strengthened thanks to an
outstanding champion of Pan-America, the Chilean lawyer
Alessandro Alvarez, who proposed the incorporation of the Pan-
American Union in the League of Nations as one of several
regional bodies, and whose programme of action was almost
identical with mine.

At the beginning of December Mr. and Mrs. Vincent Astor
organized a luncheon in our honour at which were present some
forty guests. After I had made a short speech, Frank Munsey,
the multi-millionaire newspaper proprietor, rose to make the
following statement: T am convinced that Kalergi’s project
is the only one which can save Europe. I therefore declare that
I am ready to help him with my newspapers, my fortune and
my personal influence.’ There was general astonishment, for
Munsey had omitted to say that two hours earlier he and I had
had a very full discussion about the campaign for Pan-Europe.

We had to leave rather hurriedly after lunch to catch a
train to Chicago, where I was to give a public lecture the
following evening. Munsey and I arranged to discuss the details
of our collaboration immediately after my return. On our way
back from Chicago we read in the New York Times that Munsey
had been operated on for appendicitis. A few days later he
died before I had a chance to see him again. On the basis of a
will written five years earlier, he left his entire fortune of some

CROSSING THE OCEAN I2I

forty million dollars to the Metropolitan Museum of New York,
for whose activities he had never shown the slightest interest all
his life.

Among the many Americans with whom I discussed Pan-
Europe at the time were Herbert Hoover, Secretary of State
Frank Kellog, Owen D, Young, Bernard Baruch, Walter Lip-
mann. Colonel House, General Tasker Bliss, Hamilton Fish
Armstrong, Thomas Lamont, Justice Hughes, and Walter
Lippman.

Before we left New York I founded the American Co-opera¬
tive Committee of the Pan-European Union under the chair¬
manship of Dr. Stephan Duggan, the Director of the Institute
of International Education in New York. Among those who
served on the Committee were Professor Felix Frankfurter, later
to become one of the nine supreme court judges of the United
States; Frederic Delano, Roosevelt’s uncle. General Henry
Allen; Frederick Coudert; Paul and Felix Warburg; John W.
Davis, former Ambassador in London; Julius Rosenwald, the
well-known philanthropist who had given more than a hundred
million dollars to charity in the course of a long career; Gerard
Swope, President of the General Electric Company; Mrs.
Carrie Chapman Catt, leader of the women’s movement; and
other prominent American personalities.

The Committee had the task of correcting promptly any
trend in American opinion hostile to the ideals of our move¬
ment.

One of my most active friends and supporters in the United
States was Nicholas Murray Butler, who presided over both
Columbia Univenity and the Carnegie Peace Foundation.
He wrote the foreword to the American edition of my book
Pan-Europe.^

On board the liner Majestic, on our homeward journey, we
met Nicholas Titulescu, the Roumanian Foreign Minister, and
his wife. Titulescu, one of the most fascinating and important
political personalities in post-war Europe, felt more like a
citizen of Europe than of Roumania, and for the rest of his
‘ A. Knopf, New York, 1936.

122 AN IDEA CONQ.UERS THE WORLD

life he remained an ardent fighter for Pan-Europe as well as a
close personal friend.

We crossed in perfect weather and landed at Cherbourg in
the middle of January. As our train sped past the old Norman
farmsteads, with their thick covering of snow, we had the feeling
of being genuinely at home. A deep sensation came over us
that this old and beautiful continent, all the way from the
Atlantic to the Russian steppes, was in a real sense our father-
land, that we loved it and that our personal fates were intimately
linked up with its own. From our cosmopolitan status, we had
quite imperceptibly reverted to being European patriots, filled
with a boundless love for this great continent and determined
to fight to the end for its recovery and unification.

CHAPTER XIII

THE FIRST CONGRESS OF EUROPE

Crossing Paris on our way to Vienna, I had my first talk with
Aristide Briand in his office at the Quai d’Orsay. From the
moment I first set eyes on him I was fascinated by the per¬
sonality of this remarkable man who was more artist than
politician. His eyes revealed a blend of imagination and firm¬
ness ; they were the eyes of a man capable of conceiving great
visions, but capable equally of mastering them. Uncannily
perceptive, he had a rare gift for handling men and was an
accomplished diplomat. His lively intelligence was activated
by a warm and passionate heart. Briand hated war; he felt
himself cast in the role of a crusader for peace. He was also
reputed to be a good orator—a reputation which he amply
deserved, for in his speeches he gave brilliant expression to the
convictions which he so deeply held.

In some ways Briand reminded me of a thoroughbred Persian
cat, supple and ready at all times to bound forward; a man
of peace and yet all his life a crusader. At times he was not
unlike a great musician, a cellist: his cello was his voice, which
he was able to use and control superbly. Here was a man for
whom Pan-Europe was a matter of the heart. Unlike so many
others, Briand was not content just to pay lip-service to our
cause in private. He was resolved to proclaim it loudly to all man¬
kind. Speaking later in the Chamber, Briand said that the idea
of Pan-Europe had fascinated him ever since 1925; his success
at Locarno had encouraged him to continue on that course.

Briand began the interview by asking how the idea had been
received in America. He wanted to know every detail about
the movement and was visibly satisfied by the progress which I
reported. He was determined to crown his Locarno triumph
by proposing an even bolder step, that towards the United
States of Europe. At Locarno he had said plainly that the
statesmen of Europe must learn to talk in European terms. I

123

124 IDEA CONQUERS THE WORLD

felt full of hope that this great man, who seemed somehow to
have the confidence of the people of Europe, would call upon
the governments to lose no time in laying the foundations of
the United States of Europe.

Had Briand then become Prime Minister, his substantial
majority in the Chamber might have encouraged him to
attempt such a step at once. But as Foreign Minister of a
government presided over by Poincare, he had to proceed slowly
and with much caution so as not to come into open conflict
with his nationalistically minded colleagues. The latter never
ceased to mistrust him and continued in various ways to intrigue
against his policy of international understanding.

Briand promised me full moral support and asked me speci¬
ally to keep him well informed about all further developments.
As we parted he said: 'Marchez vile — vite — vitel’ I could not
help thinking at that moment of the words with which Sir Eric
Drummond bade me farewell: ‘Please don’t go too fast.’ These
contrasting outlooks symbolized the tragic divergence between
the policies pursued respectively by France and Great Britain
towards Pan-Europe.

We spent the evening in the company of Thomas Mann and
his wife. Thomas Mann reports in his diary, published some time
later, my exaggerated hopes after my first meeting with Briand:

Count Coudcnhovc-Kalergi and his wife Ida Roland (unforgettable,
the Messalina-like majesty of her Zarina, comman^ng, with the
star on her bosom, erect behind her imperial writing-desk) await us
in the hall. Coudenhove, the little red-and-gold symbol of Pan-
Europe in his buttonhole, is one of the most curious and, incidentally,
one of the best-looking persons I ever met. Half Japanese, half
mixed from the breed of Europe’s international nobility, he really
represents, as one knows, a Eurasiatic type of noble cosmopolite,
exceedingly fascinating and giving an average German the feeling
of being somewhat provincial. Two folds between his orientally
shaped eyes, under a pure, firm and proudly borne forehead, give
to his smile the character of earnest determination. His personality
and his words disclose unshakable faith in a political idea that I
do not consider without defects, but that he is spreading throughout
the world and propagating by his pen and his person with clearest
energy. He was coming from America and from England, where he

THE FIRST CONGRESS OF EUROPE I 25

had everywhere presented his ideas with strong moral success, and
just had here a detailed talk with Briand, who had listened to him
very attentively. He expressed confidence that things were getting
on and that his vision would be realized within two years. I can
think of nothing more impressive than thb prepossessing, high-
minded and democratically inclined prototype of a new society
who, born and bred to think in terms of continents rather than
countries, took it upon himself to shape the world according to the
dictates of his own reason.

On our return journey from America, my wife and I worked
out a plan for holding the first Congress of Europe in Vienna in
the autumn of 1926.

In many countries Pan-European Committees had come
into being independently and lacked the necessary contact with
our head office in Vienna; in some countries there were even
rival groups which competed for my official recognition. The
time had therefore come to create a firm control at the centre
and prevent a decentralization of the movement.

With a view to broadening as far as possible the attendance at
the Congress, I wrote to all the most eminent men in Europe ask¬
ing them to answer two questions: Do you consider the creation of
a United States of Europe necessary? Do you consider the crea¬
tion of a United States of Europe possible?* I received many
answers; most of them in the affirmative. Those who believed
that Pan-Europe was both necessary and practically possible
were invited to attend the Congress; so were all the members of
the Pan-European Union and of its various national committees.

Six famous statesmen agreed to serve as honorary presidents
of the Congress: Eduard BeneS, Joseph Caillaux, Paul Loebe,
Francesco Nitti, Nicola Politis and Ignaz Seipel.

The first Congress of Europe was formally opened on 3rd
October and remained in session until 6th October. More than
two thousand delegates took part, representing twenty-four
nations. The plenary sessions were held in the huge marble
hall of the Vienna Concert House which had been decorated
for the occasion with the flags of every European country.

* The replies to this questionnaire were published in the second volume of
Kampf urn Paneuropa, Paneuropa-Verlag, Vienna.

126 AN IDEA CONQ,UERS THE WORLD

Heads of delegations sat on the rostrum, behind which hung
portraits of the famous ancestors of Pan-Europe: Charlemagne,
Sully, Komensky, the Abbd de St. Pierre, Kant, Napoleon,
Victor Hugo, Mazzini and Nietzsche. The whole audience rose
to its feet as the flag of the United States of Europe—the pan-
European symbol on a background of sky-blue—was unfurled
to the strains of organ music. On behalf of the Congress,
Monsignor Scipel formally saluted Europe’s new flag.

I then addressed the Assembly:

Europeans and friends of Europe! Pan-Europe is the great revolu¬
tion of European brotherhood.

Like all revolutions, it is a declaration of war and a declaration
of peace.

A declaration of war on the extreme egotism of individuals and
of nations that arc betraying and selling out Europe for their petty
interests; a declaration of war on all who want to profit by Europe’s
dismemberment; to all who wish to split and to sabotage our great
movement I

Pan-Europe is a declaration of peace to all men and nations of
good will; to all who are tired of the series of fratricidal wars and of
political intrigues that have to be paid with the blood of Europe’s
peasants, workers and other citizens; a declaration of peace to all
nations of the world who, in the East and in the West, wish to start
with us a new page of history.

This great struggle shall be carried on until the assembly that has
met today shall be followed by another assembly: the Constituent
Assembly of the European Federation.

That day will come, just as today has come, if we believe in it
and fight for it. . . !

Our Movement is a political campaign, our Union an army of
peace, our Congress a political war-council.

We appeal to all nations and governments of Europ>e to help
us win this struggle against wars, customs and oppression: this
battle for a free, peaceful, prosperous, strong and united Europe!

We have assembled here at the first Congress for Pan-Europe,
to prepare for Europe’s resurrection from misery, shame and folly—
one thought shall unite us, one aim, one will: Vive VEurope!

The French delegation was led by one of the most active
members of the Government: Yvon Delbos. Head of the
German delegation was Paul Loebe, who was accompanied by

THE FIRST CONGRESS OF EUROPE

127

ex-Chancellor Wirth. Pilsudski had sent Alexander Lednicki,
former envoy to Moscow, as leader of the Polish delegation.
The Yugoslav delegates were presided over by Premier KoroSec,
the Greeks by Nicola Politis, a former Foreign Minister and
Greece’s permanent representative to the League of Nations.
Other delegations led by former Ministers were those of Hun¬
gary, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Estonia and Finland. Our
American committee was represented by its treasurer, Frederick
H. Allen, our British committee by A. Watts, a member of the
Royal Institute of International Affairs, and Democratic Russia
by its former Prime Minister, Alexander Kerenski.

Briand, not content with sending a cable, instructed his
envoy in Vienna, de Beaumarchais, to express his warm per¬
sonal greetings, and in a special speech from the rostrum his
good wishes for the success of the Congress.

The Congress ended on a harmonious note, symbolic of the
triumph of the movement. Our ambitious programme was
unanimously adopted^ and so were the statutes of the Union.
The Union was given an executive organ in the shape of a
central council which was to consist of the presidents of the
various national committees. The presidency of this central
council was conferred on me by acclamation.

In honour of those attending the Congress, the Austrian
Government organized a magnificent evening reception in the
imperial palace of Schonbrunn. Vienna’s Social-Democratic
Mayor, Karl Seitz, also gave a reception in the town hall at

* This was the seven-point programme of the Pan-European Union and Movement:

I. The Pan-European Movement is above all party considerations the mass
movement for European Union. The Pan-European Union is the organ of
the movement.

9. lire Pan-European Union aims at setting up a sister organization of the
Pan-American Union.

3. The goal of the Pan-European Movement is the association of all European
states which are willing and able to set up a political and economic union,
based upon equal rights and peace.

4. The world programme of the Pan-European Movement is: friendly co¬
operation with the League of Nations and with other political continents.

5. The Pan-European Union abstains from interfering in internal politics.

6. The Pan-European Union is organized according to states; every state has
its autonomous committee that covers its budget. The headquarters
of the Pan-European Union co-ordinating the activities of all national
unions, is in Vienna.

7. The symbol of the Pan-European Union is a red cross on a golden sun.

128 AN IDEA CONQ,UERS THE WORLD

which he received his guests with a wonderful show of hos¬
pitality. Other parties were given by the legations of France,
Germany, Belgium and Czechoslovakia. Then there were gala
performances in the Opera House and the Burgtheater; Ros¬
tand’s L'Aiglon was the piece chosen for the Burgtheater, with
Ida Roland in the leading part.

There was enthusiastic response to the Congress. Messages
of goodwill began to pour in from several continents.
Newspapers in all languages acclaimed the Congress as the
prelude to an entirely new policy. The French delegates were
received by Briand immediately on their return. Briand was
delighted with the report they gave him. For him, the
success of Pan-Europe was the vindication and triumph of that
policy of mutual understanding which he had so long pursued.

As for the Union, a new chapter had at last begun. The
movement was outgrowing its own organization which could
no longer cater—even in its expanded form—for the number
of members who now supported it. Millions of people had
already set their hopes on Pan-Europe and were convinced of
the possibility of its realization. Pan-Europe soon became the
ideal as well tis the great hope of the younger generation. But
the next step forward could only be taken by the governments
themselves. This meant in fact that the initiative would have to
come from France or, to be more precise, from Briand.

In May 1927 the Central Council of the Union met in Paris.
Briand received us very cordially. Every delegate was invited
to report about progress in his own country. Briand then
addressed us in hopeful words and we felt sure that some
decisive action by the French Government was in the making.
He promised to do everything in his power to assist our move¬
ment to victory. I thereupon invited him in the name of the
Central Council to become honorary president of the entire
Union. He accepted without hesitation.

Next morning the Havas News Agency broadcast to the
world the news that France’s Foreign Minister and Europe’s
most popular statesman had publicly and without reservation
identified himself tvith the cause of Pan-Europe.

CHAPTER XIV

YEARS OF PILGRIMAGE

With the sudden growth of our movement came a complete
upheaval in our private lives. In the past, notwithstanding our
many outside interests, we had always contrived to live our
lives in private. From now onwards it was as if we had stepped
into a political whirlpool.

Our year’s work was generally divided into three parts.
During the winter months I was fully occupied attending to
the organization of the movement; this included launching
propaganda campaigns, sending out circulars and distributing
leaflets. Meanwhile, Idel kept herself busy performing and
rehearsing, partly in the Burgtheater, partly in Max Rein¬
hardt’s theatre in the Josephsstadt. In the spring came a few
months during which we were regularly on the move—with a
very extensive programme of lectures and conferences. The
third part of the year, the late summer and autumn, we invari¬
ably spent in the country. It was during this period that I
had an opportunity of working on my books.

In Vienna we had our apartment in the abbot’s lodgings of the
Heiligenkreutzerhof. The lodgings were in the very centre of the
town, only a few minutes’ walk from St. Stephen’s Cathedral.
Set in a large and secluded courtyard, the house had for centuries
been the abbot’s town residence. Now that the advent of the
motor car had brought the monastery itself, a magnificent
Cistercian foundation in the Vienna woods, within easy dis¬
tance of the city, the abbot no longer required a separate town
residence and was prepared to rent it to us. The building
dated back to the beginning of the eighteenth century. Its
interior decoration was of the purest and richest Vienna
baroque; the paintings and stuccos on the ceiling, the lofty
inlaid doors with their finely sculptured brass locks and the
elaborately carved Theresian furniture all seemed untouched
by contemporary influences.

129

130 AN IDEA CONQ^UERS THE WORLD

Between the abbot’s house and my nearby office in the
Hofburg a shuttle service operated at all hours. In the office
itself, a staff of competent collaborators worked untiringly under
the joint direction of Valeric Benedict, a fine idealist, and my
engineer brother-in-law, Leopold C. Klausner, who served the
movement with intelligence, enthusiasm and devotion. Such
was our confidence in every member of the staff that Idel and
1 were able to spend the greater part of the year away from
Vienna without causing the work of the office to suffer in the
slightest degree.

I maintained excellent relations with all public men in
Austria: with Seipel’s two successors, Chancellors Ramek and
Schober, with Presidents Hainisch and Miklas, as well as
with several Socialist leaders, among them Karl Seitz, Mayor
of Vienna, and Karl Renner, Chairman of the National
Assembly.

Of the many foreign statesmen who visited Vienna, the one
who impressed me most was Eleuthcrios Venizelos. An enthusi¬
astic supporter of Pan-Europe, Venizelos was full of confidence
for its future. He spoke to me in the manner of an old friend,
almost a compatriot; the name Kalcrgi had, after all, very
intimate associations with his own native island, Crete. Hb
white beard, his white hair and the marble complexion of
his tall, handsome forehead blended the wisdom of old age
with the gracefulness of eternal youth. This outstanding grace¬
fulness was compounded of intellectual genius and great per¬
sonal charm.

He had just been to Ankara and was still full of the impres¬
sions gained on that visit. At one stroke the hereditary enmity
between Greeks and Turks had been transformed into an
amicable alliance. ‘Shortly after I had come to power,’ he
told me, ‘I reviewed the whole complex of Turco-Greek rela¬
tions. It suddenly became very clear to me that there were
really only two ways out of the impasse created by a mass of
conflicting claims and counter-claims: either our two countries
would go on quarrelling—in which case they would sooner or
later exterminate one another, or there must be a genuine

YEARS OF PILGRIMAGE I 3 I

reconciliation—after which the two countries would work
harmoniously together.

‘I made it known to Mustapha Kemal that I was ready to
let bygones be bygones, that I wished to turn over a new leaf
in our mutual relations and make way for a policy of Turco-
Greek collaboration. Kemal, who is a great leader as well as a
great man, accepted my suggestion at once. I therefore betook
myself to Ankara, where it did not take us long to reach full
understanding on the principles of a close Turco-Greek entente.’

The splendid simplicity of this action only becomes apparent
when one considers fully the long history of fighting between
the two peoples, stretching back eight hundred years and
inflamed at all stages by religious hatred and fanaticism. Only
five years earlier, Greeks and Turks had been locked in a
merciless life-and-death struggle in which both sides appeared
to exclude the thought of reconciliation. Now all this bitter
hatred was suddenly gone, merely because the political genius
of two statesmen had proved stronger than the whole gamut of
hereditary feuds. Here indeed was an example to inspire the
leaders of France and Germany. Here also was conclusive
evidence at last that leaders, not peoples, were to blame for the
slow progress of the Pan-European project.

We came to speak of racial questions. Venizelos held that
there were no racial differences between Greeks and Turks.
‘Those who continued to adhere to the Christian Church,’
he said, ‘were regarded as Greeks, whilst those who embraced
the Moslem faith became Turks. Had my ancestors become
Moslems and Kemal’s followers of Christ, then I would today
be a Turk and he a Greek.’ To emphasize this point, Venizelos
told me that whilst in Ankara he had attended a parade of boy-
scouts: the proportion of fair-haired Turks among those march¬
ing past was about one-third, greater, in fact, than would be
found among Athenian boy-scouts.

In the course of our discussion, Venizelos convinced me of
the need to include Turkey in the Pan-European project. I had
purposely left this question open because of the partly Asiatic
character of Turkey. But Venizelos made it clear that in view

132 AN IDEA CONQ.UERS THE WORLD

of the community of interests which had now been established
between the two countries, Greece would find it hard to con¬
tinue her collaboration unless Turkey was also found a place in
the Union.

Among the many Americans whom I met in Vienna during
these years, one who became a special friend of mine was
William Bullitt, then a promising young author. Bullitt was
keenly interested in Pan-Europe. In later years, and after a
brilliant career as Ambassador, Bullitt became one of the
most effective propagandists of Pan-Europe in the United
States.

Our summers we usually spent either near one of the peaceful
lakes in the Austrian Alps or on the enchanting island of Hid-
densee, near Rugen, on the Baltic coast. The island housed a
small colony of artists, generally swarming around Gerhart
Hauptmann, with whom we spent many enjoyable hours. On
these holidays we were accompanied by our daughter Erica,
who spent the rest of the year in a convent at St. Polten, near
Vienna. Her ambition was to study gardening. From her
mother she had inherited a passionate love of nature and a real
feeling for flowers and animals. We were all of us very happy
to be able to spend so much of our time in the country.

In spite of the large amount of mail which reached me daily
from Vienna, I found time during these summer months to
continue my philosophical studies.

Shortly after the Congress of Europe, I wrote a new book
entitled Hero or Saint^. I began by discussing the influence of
climate on the respective ideals of northern and southern popu¬
lations. My point was that what we generally refer to as
‘oriental’ and ‘occidental’ mentalities ought really to be called
‘northern’ and ‘southern’ mentalities. I went on to show how
the ideal of the contemplative saint is a product of the passive
southern temperament, whilst the ideal of the fighting hero is
more suited to the climate of the cold and barren north where
contemplation is a sure way of inviting destruction and survival
depends on continuous effort and struggle. I concluded that,
* Held Oder Heiliger, Faneuropa-Verlag, Vienna, 1927.

YEARS OF PILGRIMAGE I33

except for the Christian adoration of saints, European culture
generally revolves around the heroic concept of man.

This conclusion led me to examine the three principal
sources of European culture: Greek individualism, Jewish-
Christian socialism and Nordic-Germanic heroism. At one
point in history, these three sources merged into the European
ideal of chivalry, whence they developed later into the more
modern concept of the ‘gentleman’—a concept now held
independently of nationality, racial origin or philosophical
views.

The thoughts expressed in Hero or Saint were developed by
me in a further book entitled Away from Materialism, * published
three years later. In this second book I developed a post-
materialistic and anti-materialistic philosophy, based on the
dualism of forms and forces as the two original elements of life
and of matter. The second part deals with a new conception of
ethics, based on heroism; on the notion that not happiness but
perfection is the supreme goal of life that can be reached only
by heroism. The third part deals with the intellectual and
moral aristocracy of the future which is bound to replace
one day the materialistic principle of numerical superiority now
dominating democracy.

The following year, I wrote Stalin and Co.®, a study of Stalin’s
counter-revolutionary Bolshevism, which I saw as a combina¬
tion of state, cartel and church. The logical answer to this
gigantic conglomeration of power in the East would have been
the unification of Europe with the explicit aim of protecting
the Western concept of personal freedom.

That same year I also published a collection of aphorisms
called Commandments of Life.^

In order to have time to write my books in the summer, I
arranged that our monthly magazine, Pan-Europe, should appear
only ten months in every year. Not only did I have to super¬
vise continually all the editorial work connected with it, I also
wrote more than half its contents myself. In retrospect, my work

^ Los vom Malerialismus! Paneuropa-Verlag, Vienna, 1930.

* Stalin and Co., Paneuropa-Verlag, 1931.

’ CeboU da Lebens, Paneuropa-Verlag, 1931.

134 an idea conq,uers the world

on this magazine seems like a nightmare. No sooner had one
edition gone to press than I had to start thinking hard about
the next. The strain of this work was particularly heavy during
those months in which we were on the move.

More than a third of each year we devoted to travelling
throughout Europe, generally within the large triangle con¬
tained between Stockholm, Constantinople and Cadiz. On
these journeys we did our best to canvass for the movement:
we lectured, attended meetings, visited national and local
groups, had talks with statesmen, party leaders, authors, news¬
paper editors, business men and other influential persons whose
support for the movement we were anxious to obtain.

A few weeks after the Congress we were on our way to Stock¬
holm. From there I went to Uppsala to meet that truly remark¬
able priest of the Protestant Church, Archbishop Nathan
Soderblom, who immediately joined our Union and cam¬
paigned for it unceasingly within the body of his Church.

In Norway, the famous Fridtjof Nansen accepted the honorary
presidency of our local group, whilst Foreign Minister J. Ch.
Mowinckel became its chairman. After my lecture in Oslo I
was received by King Haakon VII, who showed sympathy and
interest for our aims. On our way home from Oslo we stopped
at Copenhagen, where we were guests of Count Moltke, the
Foreign Minister and an ardent supporter of Pan-Europe. It
was a great tragedy that he met with an untimely death shortly
after.

We paid frequent visits to Belgium and Holland. Because of
their deep-rooted European traditions and their apparent pre¬
destination to serve as battlefields between Germany and
France, these two countries had a quite particular interest in
the unification of Europe.

In Brussels we formed one of the first and most active of our
Pan-European committees. Its chairman was the former Pre¬
mier, Van de Vijvcre. As vice-chairman we found prominent
representatives of all three parties: Jules Destree for the
Socialists, Van Cauwelaert for the Catholics and Paul Emile
Janson for the Liberals. The group’s treasurer was Dannie

YEARS OF PILGRIMAGE I35

Heinemann, brilliant and dynamic American, chairman of
Sofina, the well-known international utilities concern.

Our Dutch committee was presided over by de Visser, leader
of the Conservative Party. Prime Minister Colijn was among its
supporters. One of the most original and witty members of our
Dutch committee was Dr. Lodcr, Dutch member of the Inter¬
national Court of Justice, who in spite of advancing years
seemed always full of youthful ilan and much good humour.

The chairman of our Luxembourg group was A. Mayrisch,
the founder of the European steel cartel. After my lecture to the
Luxembourg Chamber of Commerce, we spent the evening
with his family at his beautiful castle near Colpach. At table
everyone teased him about his reckless driving; his large yellow
motor car had, it seemed, been locally nicknamed the ‘Yellow
Danger ’. A few months later Mayrisch met with a fatal accident
while motoring from Luxembourg to Paris. His death meant
an irreplacable loss for the causes of Franco-German and
European economic union, which he had championed untir¬
ingly all his life.

Another outstanding supporter of Pan-Europe was Francesco
Cambo, former Finance Minister of the Spanish Government
and leader of the Catalans. We spent some time in Barcelona
as his guests. He had his home in a villa of highly original design,
situated at the centre of a roof-garden above his spacious office
building. From there one had a splendid view—as from a
mountain-peak—of the surrounding countryside and of the sea;
the near distance was a panorama of low hills, whilst high above
the mass of buildings could be seen the stone arches of the old
Gothic cathedral. Cambo, a great connoisseur and collector,
had transformed his villa into a real museum containing many
masterpieces by Titian and Botticelli.

From Barcelona we motored south in our open car, passing
Valencia, Alicante, Cartagena and Almeria. The most impres¬
sive city of all was Granada, set in its Andalusian paradise and
crowned by the Alhambra’s incomparable splendour.

From Algeciras we took a ship across the straits to Ceuta.
After inspecting Ceuta, we motored to Tetuan. Were the

136 AN IDEA CONQ.UERS THE WORLD

Roman city of Pompeii to rise out of its mass of lava, it would
almost certainly appear less strange and fabulous than the
Arab city of Tetuan. On the very doorstep of Europe, this relic
of old Arab civilization remains totally immune to European
influences, like a reincarnation of the age of Harun-al-Raschid
or a story out of the Arabian nights. In Tetuan we were the
guests of an Arab nobleman whose black Assyrian beard gave
him a handsome and dignified appearance. Only my wife and
Erica were permitted to visit his own wife in her harem; for me,
she remained totally invisible. Dinner was served in the Arab
manner without forks, spoons or knives. In their place we had
innumerable slices of bread and with them we angled as skil¬
fully as we could—first for the poultry and then for the peaches
—in the large silver bowls in which all food was served. A young
slave handed round a big bowl of water out of which we all
took sips in turn. Oddly enough, this very Oriental dinner
ended with coffee served quite in the European manner in
small china cups.

We were reminded of this banquet in Tetuan when many
years later, at a meal in a Washington restaurant, we were also
served chicken and chipped potatoes—without knives or forks.
The menu contained the excellent advice; ‘God gave you
hands. Use them.’

On a fine spring day we left Tetuan and, accompanied by an
interpreter, drove to thepicturesquecity ofTchetchouan—where
kings of Granada used to live in exile. There, in the ruins
of the royal palace, high up in the Atlas Mountains, was a
colony of white peacocks of indescribable beauty. We visited a
small cafe where we found ourselves in the company of Berbers
and Kabyles. One of them, a holy man, proceeded to give us a
pleasant glimpse into the future. We also visited the local
carpet factory, but my wife was deeply depressed at the sight
of so many small girls being made to weave at a very tender age.

Back in Tetuan we received the news that King Alphonso
XIII had abdicated and Spain been proclaimed a Republic.
This news was received quietly both in the European and the
Arab quarters.

YEARS OF PILGRIMAGE 137

From Ceuta we sailed back to republican Spain. One of the
passengers on our ship was a royalist general. He was evidently
an enemy of the new regime, for a large crowd waited for him
on the quayside and he was received with rather voluble
threats. He disembarked and walked through the crowd fear¬
lessly. Not a hand was raised against him.

There was much rejoicing in towns and villages at the out¬
come of the bloodless revolution. No one suspected how much
blood was still to flow.

We drove slowly in the direction of Madrid, passing on our
way Cadiz, Seville and Cordova. In Madrid the leaders of the
young republic gave me a most cordial welcome. Their hopes
were clearly set on Pan-Europe. One of these leaders was
Fernando de los Rios, the wise and distinguished Minister of
Justice, who many years later was to become a close friend of
mine and a most trusted collaborator during our joint exile in
the United States. I also had a long talk with Jose Ortega y
Gasset, the famous philosopher. The passage of his book,
Insurrection of the Masses, which deals with the problem of Pan-
Europe is one of the best things ever written on that subject.

On Cambo’s introduction we also called on the Duke of
Alba at his Madrid palace. On our way through Seville, we had
already admired his Moorish castle. He now received us in true
‘grandseigneurial’ fashion without the slightest indication of
nervousness; yet his position as the leading grandee of Spain
had clearly become fraught with great personal danger under
the new regime. He showed us his unique collection of historic
relics. There was a set of armour worn by his ancestor, the great
duke, and next to it a painting by Titian showing the duke
wearing it. We admired the magnificent rooms of his palace,
but he merely commented: ‘You know, there is nothing special
about this house; it only dates back to the eighteenth century.
Our house in Seville is a different matter altogether; we built
that exactly six years before Columbus discovered America.’

This ‘ we ’—which emphasized the identity of individuals over
centuries and generations—seemed to me a sign of real great¬
ness in an age of sensationalism and impermanence.

138 AN IDEA CONQ,UERS THE WORLD

Another Easter holiday we spent driving with Erica to
Constantinople, by way of Belgrade and Sophia. In Con¬
stantinople we took a ship to Athens.

Athens made us feel genuinely at home. All Greeks, no matter
whether they supported Venizelos or the royal family, were
enthusiastic for Pan-Europe. Moreover, our Greek name was
well-known in the city. We met many relatives and I was
reminded of the advice which my father had often given me—
that one should have dealings with distant rather than
close members of one’s family. Near relations somehow con¬
trive to reveal the least pleasant sides of their characters simply
by attempting to interfere in one’s private life: distant relations,
on the other hand, keep their distance and thus often reveal
their best characteristics.

One of the relations whom we met in Athens was Emmanuel
Tsouderos, who was later to become Prime Minister of the
exiled government in London. He handed me a history of the
Kalergis family which he himself had written. It was a big and
interesting-looking volume, but my efforts to apply my know¬
ledge of classical Greek to deciphering it proved of no
avail.

I was received very cordially by King George and his brother
Paul, who is now king. Both showed great sympathy and in¬
terest for the cause of Pan-Europe. But all other memories of
Athens were dwarfed by the unique and unforgettable sight of
the Acropolis, of the temple of Pallas Athene whose wisdom
had once illuminated Athens and elevated her to be the mother-
city of Europe. Even now, in its ruined state, this temple with
its huge forest of columns is one of the world’s most magnificent
monuments—unconquered by barbarism or destruction, superb
in its majestic simplicity. Midway between earth and sky, the
Acropolis is a fitting symbol of the proud and unconquerable
spirit which emanated once upon a time from that great city.

We visited Corinth, Mycenae, Argos, Epidauros, Nauplia
and Sparta. One of my most treasured recollections of this trip
is that of Sparta’s Byzantine sister-city, Mistra—the setting of
the scene with Helena in Faust; a mysterious-looking medieval

YEARS OF PILGRIMAGE I39

version of Pompeii—with churches, monasteries and gardens,
all in decay—the whole dominated by a fortress of nordic
appearance.

The ruins of Delphi, in their mountain fastness, looked like
the product of some gigantic curse that had broken over the
heads of this whole world of gods, heroes and soothsayers. Yet,
in a way, this supernatural world of the Greeks seemed to be
only temporarily dormant: one day it might return to life and
Delphi become once more a shrine of universal prophecy.

On our way home we passed Ragusa—the city which, by
its heroism and diplomacy, managed to remain free in a world
of slavery. Ragusa is like a monument in stone to its own past
greatness; perfect in general appearance as well as individual
detail, the city is one of the most beautiful in Europe. In the
neighbouring city of Spalato the ruins of Diocletian’s palace
reminded me of the story of that great emperor. Having given
a new lease of life to his empire and reached the very peak of
his power, he withdrew voluntarily from the world and from
his throne so as to be able to live the remainder of his great
life in that magnificent countryside free from all responsibilities
of government.

Our work in the principal cities was so concentrated and
exacting that we did our best to snatch bits of rest while motor¬
ing. The hood of our car was almost always down, and we rarely
travelled at more than sixty kilometers per hour. At that speed,
our journey from Vienna to Paris generally took about five
days. If the weather was fine, we hardly ever stopped for lunch
at an hotel, but had a picnic meal somewhere on the edge of a
wood. At night we tried to stay with friends; if this proved
impossible, we put up at small country inns. Our itinerary was
often upset by Idel’s passion for flowers, particularly for lilies
of the valley. If by chance we found ourselves in a wood with
many lilies, we would often stop and pick them for hours.

As far as possible, we avoided main roads, preferring the
prettier panorama of the smaller country lanes. Following
these enabled us gradually and without any set plan to become
familiar with the lesser-known parts of Europe, with old cities

140 AN IDEA CONQ.UERS THE WORLD

and quiet villages, castles and fortresses, enchanting little places
on the banks of the Maine and Weser, in Normandy and
Burgundy, in Flanders and the Ardennes; with unknown Swiss
cantons, with Styria and Slovakia, with lovely Bosnia and
picturesque Herzegovina.

There, off the beaten track, we talked to ordinary men of no
set political views. Invariably we came to speak of Pan-Europe,
a Europe as peaceful as Switzerland and as wealthy as the
United States. Our ideas were received somewhat sceptically.
These people had been disappointed so often that it was now
almost impossible for them to nurse great hopes. But on one
thing all were agreed: ‘How wonderful this would be if only
it could be achieved.’

CHAPTER XV

FRANCO-GERMAN MEDIATION

Within the wider field of our European travels, there was
also an inner circuit along which lay our most effective field
of action. The itinerary of this inner circuit was: Vienna,
Prague, Berlin, Paris, Geneva and back again to Vienna.
Prague was mainly a stopping place en route from Vienna to
Berlin. I never went there, however, without visiting the Palace,
where I payed my respects to Masaryk and BeneS and discussed
the political situation with them.

We also met Masaryk in Carlsbad. One evening we were his
guests for dinner there. The only other person present was his
daughter Alice. While a sumptuous meal was placed before
us, he himself ate only a piece of cake and drank a cup of
coffee. The moderation displayed by this wise old man at the
height of his power helped him to remain youthful in spite of
the immense amount of work with which he had to cope.
Though nearly eighty at the time, he was full of interest and
understanding for new ideas. With this agile brain went an
uncommonly supple body. Every day he went for a ride through
the woods, though he had only taken up this sport when he
was sixty-four. The more I came into contact with other states¬
men and politicians, the more I admired Masaryk, who had
managed to preserve a warm heart and a crystal-clear brain
in the face of every kind of political intrigue.

In September there was the General Assembly of the League
in Geneva. The event had somehow lost all political significance.
Its main imjwrtance now lay in the opportunity which it gave
to leading statesmen all over Europe of meeting periodically
and exchanging ideas by personal contact. The League had in
fact ceased to be an organization of sovereign states and had
instead become a kind of club for statesmen and journalists.

We visited this club every year. Each time I had long talks
with Briand, its star. I also maintained contact with the leading

142 AN IDEA CONQ.UERS THE WORLD

figures of the national committees of our movement, of which
one had meanwhile been set up in every country. Among these
figures were BeneS; Titulescu; Politis; Hjalmar Procope, Fin¬
land’s young Foreign Minister; Pusta, his Estonian colleague;
Michalakopoulos, the Greek Foreign Minister; and Marin-
koviC, Foreign Minister of Jugoslavia, a man with the sound
common sense of a peasant. After a lunch given by Briand
in honour of Pan-Europe, MarinkoviC told me how Hender¬
son, the British Foreign Secretary, had emphasized that Pan-
Europe was not directed against anybody. ‘I did not under¬
stand him at all,’ said MarinkoviC, ‘for after all, when we talk
of “ourselves” the implication is surely that we are solidly
opposed to anyone who is not “ourselves”!’

I once called on the Polish Foreign Minister, Alexander
Skrzynski. He was a young man, elegant, eccentric, witty and
temperamental—in fact, the perfect Polish aristocrat. After a
few minutes’ conversation, he said to me: ‘ Why do we stay in
this drab hotel room? Let’s take a motor-boat on the lake
and continue our conversation there.’ We carried out this
suggestion at once and sailed along the lovely banks of Lac
Leman, discussing all the while, without fear of eavesdropping,
Poland’s relations with Germany and Russia.

Soon after, Skrzynski was killed in a motor accident. In him
Poland lost one of its most capable men and Europe a source of
great hope. Fortunately Zaleski, who succeeded him, shared his
Pan-European attitude and agreed to serve on the honorary
committee of our Union.

The European centre of gravity, however, lay not in Geneva
but in Paris and Berlin. The fate of Europe depended on the
outcome of the attempts at Franco-German reconciliation.
There could be no such thing as a formal and cool relationship
between France and Germany. The two countries had either
to be mortal enemies or genuine allies; and while it remained
uncertain which of these courses they would choose, Europe’s
fate hung precariously in the balance. In the years from 1924
to 1929, conditions for an understanding were exceptionally
favourable. Stresemann, as Foreign Minister of Germany,

FRANCO-GERMAN MEDIATION I 43

and Aristide Briand, as Foreign Minister of France, did
their best to dispose of the remaining obstacles. The two men
were obviously guided by very different motives. Stresemann
regarded Pan-Europe as a convenient way of speeding up the
revision of the Versailles Treaty, whilst for Briand it was
primarily a means of stabilizing the arrangements decided on
by that treaty.

The principles of Stresemann’s revisionist policy were ap¬
proved by Germans of all political parties. Hatred of the
Versailles Treaty was at the time the one great unifying force
in German politics. Differences of opinion arose only on the
question of how the necessary revisions were to be brought
about. The Communists were all for putting an end to the
Versailles system by a revolution embracing the whole of
Europe; the Nazis favoured a war of revenge; Stresemann
and the moderate parties wanted neither war nor revolution:
they had hopes of revising the Treaty step by step through
skilful negotiation and agreement with individual neighbours.

Whilst public opinion in Germany was preoccupied with the
problem of treaty revision, in France the paramount question
was that of security. For the fourth time in a hundred years,
German armies had invaded France. All Frenchmen were
agreed that a fifth invasion must at all costs be prevented. Here,
also, differences of opinion arose as to the methods to be
adopted. Those who believed in the possibility of a permanent
reconciliation with Germany were prepared to work towards
this end. But those who had no faith in it were determined to
base the security of their country on military superiority.

Unfortunately this policy stood more than any other in the
way of reconciliation. Germany insisted as a matter of honour
on equal rights in international affairs, and made this a sine
qua non of reconciliation. Clearly, France’s security and Ger¬
many’s equal rights could only be accommodated within the
framework of a European federation. Stresemann knew this
and so did Briand. Both tried, therefore, to secure the backing
of public opinion for the lead which they felt it their duty to
give.

144 an idea conq,uers the world

Whenever in these years Germans spoke of the revision of the
Versailles Treaty, they had in mind primarily the following
points:

1. Reparations.

2. Equal military rights.

3. Evacuation of the Rhineland.

4. Return of the German colonics.

5. ‘Anschluss’of Austria.

6. Question of the Polish Corridor.

Basically, none of these questions was insoluble.

In fact, the question of evacuating the Rhineland had already
been formally solved. Unfortunately, the final evacuation was
so long delayed that its psychological effect was lost altogether.

The Austrian question was one which could only be solved
within a European framework. It would have been much easier
for Germany to forget all about the ‘Anschluss’ than to re¬
nounce her claim to an Alsace-Lorraine plebiscite. Yet Germany
apparently found it possible, within the framework of the
Treaty of Locarno, voluntarily to renounce all her claims
against that region.

The question of the return of the colonies did not arouse any
really deep feelings in Germany. It would not have been diffi¬
cult to find a compromise solution, either by returning to
Germany one of her former colonies or by allowing Germany
to participate on a non-political level in the economic develop¬
ment of Central Africa.

Germany’s demands for military equality presented much
greater difficulties, since French security rested clearly on the
superiority of French arms. Only a close military alliance
between the two countries could lead to a mutually satisfactory
solution.

More difficult still was the problem of reparations. The key
to this lay not so much in Paris as in Washington. So long as
America insisted on the repayment of all war debts, France
could hardly consider cancelling reparation payments due to

FRANCO-GERMAN MEDIATION I 45

her. On the other hand, every German was convinced that his
standard of living was affected by reparations; consequently
he was insistent on demanding their early abolition.

My proposal was to the effect that the whole problem of war
debts should be disposed of finally by selling all French and
British possessions in Guiana and the Pacific to the United
States. By way of compensation, France and Great Britain would
receive the former German colonies which had already been
placed under their mandate. On this basis it would have been
possible, if not to cancel reparation payments altogether, at
least to reduce them to a more tolerable level.

By far the most difficult obstacle in the way of a satisfactory
understanding between Germany and her neighbours was that
of the Polish Corridor. For Poland, the Corridor represented a
vital link with the overseas world; for Germany, it was a knife
mercilessly carving the fatherland in two. It was not, therefore,
surprising that Poland demanded the unconditional mainten¬
ance of the Corridor, whilst Germany was equally insistent on
its immediate abolition.

It was not within the power of French statesmen to solve this
problem. The merest hint of a compromise solution would have
been regarded as rank treason by Warsaw. And France was in
no position thus to endanger the Franco-Polish alliance which
her statesmen regarded as one of the cornerstones of post-war
security. Germany, on the other hand, was not prepared to
accept her eastern frontier as final. In 1927 I asked Stresemann
whether he intended to make a bid for the Corridor. ‘We are
prepared to wait,’ he said; ‘we have no wish to attack Poland,
but if Poland should one day be attacked by Soviet Russia we
have every intention of presenting our account.’

A peaceful solution of the Corridor problem seemed virtually
hopeless and I often expressed the fear lest a second world war
might break out over Danzig. On two occasions I tried to act as
mediator in solving this thorny problem.

My first proposal—which I made immediately after the
Vienna Congress of Pan-Europe—was based on the following
principles:

146 AN IDEA CONQUERS THE WORLD

1. Partition of the Corridor between Poland and Germany.
Danzig to become German; Gdynia to remain Polish.
Poland to have a free port in Danzig and full rights of
passage to Gdynia.

2. Poland to renew its age-old union with Lithuania and
thereby to gain direct access to the Baltic at Memel;
Poland to return Wilna to Lithuania within the frame¬
work of a Polish-Lithuanian union.

This proposal met with a friendly response in Germany, but
great hostility in Poland. When I went to Warsaw shortly after
to deliver a public lecture, a group of nationalistic students
staged a demonstration against me and had to be dispersed
by the police. The nationalists even succeeded in persuading
the management of our Warsaw hotel to haul in the Pan-
European flag which had been hoisted in our honour on the roof.

A few years later our periodical, Pan-Europe, featured the
terms of a second proposal. This had been thought out and
drafted by two well-known Swiss engineers, Charles and Jules
Jaeger. The territory of Danzig was to be divided between
Poland and Germany on a basis which would give the city of
Danzig to Germany. A canal was then to be dug connecting the
Polish stretch of the Vistula with Gdynia. Direct road and rail
communications were further to be built over an elaborate
system of dams and bridges so as to connect Germany v«th
Danzig and East Prussia without touching the Corridor. The
effect of this arrangement would be to unite the two parts of
Germany without requiring any sacrifice on the Polish side.

At the beginning of 1927 I had a talk with Briand about the
composition of the French Pan-European Committee. Since
many leading French statesmen had come out openly in favour
of Pan-Europe, I asked Briand to suggest one of them as a likely
candidate for the presidency of the Committee. I was surprised
to find that his choice fell neither on Herriot nor on Painlevd,
but on Loucheur.

Louis Loucheur, a man of exceptional intelligence and
dynamic personality, looked like an amiable, elegant brother of

FRANCO-GERMAN MEDIATION I47

Molotov. He deliberately sought wealth and power as a basis
for constructive and practical achievement. In a Soviet state
he would doubtless have made a most accomplished People’s
Commissar. In the Third Republic his ambition was to be both
a millionaire and a Minister. Loucheur had one foot planted
in the business world—the other in that of politics. He was
firmly rooted in both camps. In addition, he was proprietor of
the Paris newspaper Le Petit Journal^ over whose editorial policy
he had considerable influence. His thorough knowledge of
economic affairs rendered him almost indispensable to the
Council of Ministers. In all questions of this sort he was the
chief adviser of his friend Briand, who understood little of
economics. Loucheur was temperamental and impatient; he
worked prodigiously hard and at great speed.

In next to no time he had formed our French Committee.
The two vice-presidents were leaders of the left and right
respectively; Leon Blum and Joseph Barthelcmy, the well-
known lawyer who was later to become Minister of Justice in
the Vichy Government.

I personally had converted Blum to the cause of Pan-Europe
at my first meeting with him. We became close friends. Blum
was one of those rare statesmen who regarded Pan-Europe not
as an instrument of national policy but as an aim worth pursuing
for its own sake. He was a true European patriot. His great
personal charm, coupled with a cultured and far-reaching
intelligence, made him appear not only a statesman but, even
more, a moral leader.

When Loucheur and I had finally set up the French Commit¬
tee and included in it leaders of all parties, former Ministers,
Premiers and Ambassadors, intellectuals, artists and journalists,
Loucheur said to me: ‘ We have a fine committee now and can
add to it as many famous names as we want, but please do not
believe that we shall create Pan-Europe simply by having this
committee. Once a year—unless they ask to be excused—the
members will turn up at our General Meeting. Apart from that,
they will not move a finger for Pan-Europe and everything will
remain exactly as it always has been.

148 AN IDEA CONQ,OERS THE WORLD

‘If you really want to win support for your ideas in France,
you need the help of the business leaders. Only if you succeed
in persuading these gentlemen to drop their strictly nationalist
attitude in favour of a European one will it be possible for
France to be won over to the Pan-European idea.*

Before long Loucheur had formed a second committee
consisting of French business leaders. This committee had
twenty members and represented every branch of French
industry: Theodore Laurent and Lambert Ribot (steel),
Gabriel Cordier and Louis Marlio (aluminium), de PeyerimhofF
(coal), Robert Hecker (electric power), Rene Fould (ship¬
building), Duchemin (chemicals), Gillet (silk), Dubrulle (wool),
etc.

We decided to form a similar committee in Germany so that
we could arrange inter-European economic talks between the
two groups. Prior to the first Congress of Pan-Europe, German
business had never taken our movement seriously. But when the
success of the Congress became apparent, they began suddenly
to display considerable curiosity.

At heart most German business leaders, like their French
colleagues, were ardent nationalists. In the newspapers under
their control, attacks were always being launched against the
Treaty of Versailles, the Allies’ reparations policy and the
French Government in general. They had little love for the
political programme of our movement. What interested them,
however, was the idea of a European Customs Union,

Germany’s most pressing economic problem at the time was
how to feed and employ her rapidly increasing population.
Since Posen and other agricultural regions had been lost, in
accordance with the Versailles Treaty, Germany’s food produc¬
tion no longer sufficed to sustain the existing, let alone a growing
population. In consequence, a great part of Germany’s popula¬
tion had to be supplied with foodstuffs from abroad. To pay for
these imports Germany was compelled to export on a substantial
scale. Her export trade, far from being a luxury, thus became
a vital necessity for Germany. But this trade was beginning
to be adversely affected by the industrialization of hitherto

FRANCO-GERMAN MEDIATION I49

undeveloped countries as well as by the policies of economic
autarchy which many of Germany’s neighbours were then
pursuing. Only a European Customs Union could open up for
German industry a large and unrestricted market of some
three hundred million consumers.

These and similar thoughts induced the German business
leaders to take an active interest in Pan-Europe. To achieve the
desired Customs Union, they were ready to make political
concessions or, at any rate, to desist from pressing their own
political claims.

Success in the economic field mattered more to them than
success in the purely political field. Wherever I went, I heard
allusions to the old German Customs Union, which had pre¬
ceded the creation of the Reich. On some such basis, German
business leaders were prepared to reach an understanding with
their French colleagues: the two economies would thus be
integrated sufficiently closely to render a new Franco-German
war practically impossible. Once that had been achieved, the
United States of Europe was a big step nearer reality.

I had no difficulty in forming a German economic committee.
Its members were: Geheimrat Duisberg and Carl Bosch
(chemicals), Hermann Bucher (electric power). Dr. Paul
Silverberg (coal), Albert Vogler and Ernst Poensgen (steel),
Richard Heilner (linoleum), Hermann Lange and Richard
Gutcrmann (silk) and Ludwig Roselius (sanka-coffee). There
were also three bankers: E. G. von Stauss, Herbert Gutmann
and Carl Melchior.

This Pan-European Economic Council held several meetings
in Paris under the chairmanship of Loucheur. Though views
were exchanged on a frank and cordial basis it was clear that
there was a wide gap between the German and French ap¬
proaches. The Germans were of course determined to conquer
the French market. The French, on the other hand, were not
particularly concerned about exports, but were deeply anxious
to protect their market against foreign competition.

Loucheur proved to be not only a brilliant chairman, but
also a very skilful mediator. He proposed the formation of

150 AN IDEA GONftUERS THE WORLD

European cartels between corresponding industries in the two
countries. These cartels would afford protection to France on
the same basis as customs tariffs. Within such a framework it
would be possible to work towards the gradual elimination of
inter-European tariffs and to create in time a large free European
market.

Loucheur took the view that such a policy would only be
feasible if two conditions existed: first, there must be political
agreement between France and Germany so that the danger of
war could be virtually ruled out; secondly, the envisaged
inter-European cartels must be placed under the control of
the League of Nations, so as to prevent their being used to keep
the cost of living artificially high.

In principle, both parties accepted these proposals. The
remarkable success of the European steel cartel which had
recently been formed by Mayrisch acted as a strong spur in this
direction. Unfortunately our negotiations came to a sudden
end when the outbreak of the world economic crisis compelled
every government to revert to strictly protectionist measures.
For the time being, all hope of a European Economic Union
had to be shelved.

Loucheur had however succeeded in arousing interest for the
idea of Pan-Europe among French business leaders. He had
even made some converts. This success had far-reaching con¬
sequences both in the field of politics and in that of propaganda.
Presently, newspapers of marked nationalistic tendencies began
to write friendly leading articles about Pan-Europe, and right-
wing politicians like Tardieu, Laval and Flandin treated our
movement with no less respect than their Liberal and Socialist
opponents. I even had a thorough discussion about Pan-
Europe with Poincar^. He received me in a very courteous
and friendly manner, but left me to guess whether he
was for or against Pan-Europe. I suspected that he was
for it in the long run, but doubted its feasibility in present
circumstances.

This change of attitude on the part of the right wing in
France paved the way for Briand’s initiative. In this sense,

FRANCO-GERMAN MEDIATION I5I

Briand had given me excellent advice when he suggested
Loucheur for the chairmanship of the French group.

In Germany, similar consequences flowed from the interest
which the business leaders began to display in Pan-Europe.
Here also moderate right-wing elements gradually came over
to our cause.

This growing interest of business leaders was of decisive
importance, too, for the future financing of the movement.
Under the chairmanship of Robert Bosch, the Stuttgart
industrialist, we formed a Society for the Promotion of Pan-
Europe, an international company with headquarters in Zurich.
As trustee of the company we appointed Dr. Walter Keller-
Staub, a prominent Swiss lawyer and genuine Pan-European.

Robert Bosch was one of Germany’s outstanding Europeans.
A self-made man, he had become a supporter of Pan-Europe
less for economic than for moral reasons. After the First World
War he made over the vast profits accumulated during the war
to all sorts of charities, his guiding principle being not to profit
by the misery of others. The same motives induced him to take
up the cause of Pan-Europe: not to procure more export
markets but to protect Europe against the threat of another
war.

As against the many people who looked upon Pan-Europe as
a means of enriching themselves or their countries, there were
always a few who followed our movement out of pure convic¬
tion. These rare men one found among politicians, economists,
journalist, as well as in other professions. Many of them became
our personal friends.

The Pan-European idea gained ground particularly fast
among the younger generation. Seminars on Pan-Europe were
formed at many universities and it seemed as if the rising genera¬
tion was determined to work hard for the unification of the
Continent. In this manner, our movement, which in its wider
form had perforce to be a mixed bag of politicians, economists,
authors, scientists and artists, came to have a small nucleus of
genuine Europeans. Their influence only began to be really
felt, however, after the end of the Second World War.

CHAPTER XVI

BRIAND ACTS

When, in the autumn of 1928, we drew up a tentative balance-
sheet of our achievements, we noted one very remarkable
contrast. Numerically, the movement had assumed the dimen¬
sions of an avalanche in the space of five years; yet it failed to
have any influence on the policies pursued by national Govern¬
ments. Since Briand’s acceptance of the honorary presidency
of the Union, I hoped month after month that some initiative
would be forthcoming on the part of the French Government.
But Briand remained silent. There were many statements of
Government policy and several important parliamentary
debates. Each time I hoped to find in them some reference to
Pan-Europe, but each time I was disappointed. I was equally
disappointed in the 1927 and 1928 Assemblies of the League
during which not a word was said about the unification of the
Continent.

Every time I went to Paris I called on Briand and urged him
to arrange a high-level conference as a first step towards the
unification of Europe. His replies were never negative. He was
clearly working on some plan in this direction, but did not
consider the time fully ripe. There seemed always to be just
one or two tasks which remained to be tackled before he could
publicly seize the initiative for Pan-Europe. The two major
diplomatic tasks which postponed Briand’s initiative were the
Kellogg Pact and the Young Plan. By the Kellogg Pact he
hoped to ensure that the United States would not consider the
unification of Europe as a move directed against them. A
prior settlement of the reparations question seemed important
to Briand inasmuch as it would deprive Stresemann of the
opportunity of trading his support for Pan-Europe for a can¬
celling of reparation debts. Two precious years were lost over
these matters, and when Briand’s initiative finally came it was
—alas—too late.

152

BRIAND ACTS

153

I had almost given up hoping that the French Government
would move when, towards the end of 1928, Briand informed
me of his decision to submit the project of Pan-Europe to the
next Assembly of the League. It was a tremendous moment for
me. At last the European question appeared to be moving out
of the sphere of private propaganda into that of official action.
I did not doubt for one moment that Briand would succeed in
creating an organization on the same lines as the Pan-American
Union. Such an organization could later be transformed into a
formal Customs Union by agreeing on some kind of preferential
system; out of a Customs Union it might eventually develop
into the United States of Europe. I looked forward to being
relieved at long last of the burden of campaigning which I had
hitherto carried; once rid of this burden, I was determined to
devote my time exclusively to philosophical work.

My confidence in Briand was further strengthened when I
met Alexis Leger, his principal secretary and close collaborator.
Legcr was a remarkable personality and a man of outstanding
intelligence. Diplomat and poet, he had become Briand’s
homme de confiance on European questions. We remained on
terms of close friendship during the changing fortunes of
the next few years.

In June 1929, while the Council of the I^cague met in Madrid,
Briand took the opportunity of discussing his pan-European
plan with Stresemann and other Foreign Ministers. Every one
promised support for the initiative he proposed to take. A few
weeks later he convened a press conference at the Quay
d’Orsay at which he announced publicly his intention of
placing the question of unifying Europe on the agenda of the
League’s September meeting.

A few hours later the whole world was discussing Briand’s
initiative. The idea of a United States of Europe had appeared
utopian only yesterday, but was now suddenly on the point of
being realized. Europe’s most famous statesman had thrown
into the scales not only his personal prestige, but also that of
the nation he led. The reaction throughout Europe was
astounding. Insignificant local papers in the Balkan countries.

154 an idea conq,uers the world

in Scandinavia and in Portugal, discussed the announcement
in their leading articles. The United States of Europe had
suddenly become the main topic of conversation in drawing¬
rooms and clubs, in cafes and country inns, in parliaments and
at family dinner-tables, in large cities and in the most distant
villages. Industrial workers and peasants, artisans and mer¬
chants, fishermen and shepherds, all began to hope fervently
that United Europe would bring lasting peace and a higher
standard of life.

Voices were of course also raised in opposition. Extreme
nationalists, for instance, were sworn enemies of Pan-Europe. In
the past they had simply ignored our movement so as not to give
it unnecessary publicity. Now they were compelled to come out
into the open and attack us publicly. The nationalist elements
received support from those sectors of business which had a
direct interest in the maintenance of a high level of protective
tariffs.

In spite of this not inconsiderable opposition, Briand’s an¬
nouncement had a very good press. The peoples of Europe were
evidently prepared to back him. Much to everyone’s surprise,
even Fascist Italy supported Briand, hoping that Pan-Europe
would somehow open French North Africa to Italian colonizers.

Only the British attitude was sceptical and apprehensive.
Prime Minister Macdonald stated in an interview with the
Daily Telegraph that he considered the plan for the establish¬
ment of the United States of Europe premature. In his opinion,
it should be postponed for at least ten years. Great Britain’s
negative attitude caused everyone to think again. But Briand
was hopeful that he would in the end succeed in moving the
British Government into line with his ideas.

Athome, Briand’s great popularity had beenfurther enhanced
by his latest move. He had now reached the peak of his career:
he was regarded as the man of peace. Notwithstanding some
opposition encountered in Parliament, he had the full support of
the French people. But at this critical moment Parliament, too,
gave him proof of its confidence by electing him Prime Minister
and entrusting him with the leadership of the Government.

BRIAND ACTS

155

In the opening speech, which he delivered in his joint capacity
of head of the Government and Foreign Minister, he dealt
with his recent pan-European initiative:

For the last four years I have been much concerned with the
ambitious programme known as the United States of Europe, with¬
out in any way committing myself to this gigantic task. Now, after
thorough scrutiny of this whole complex of problems, I have reached
the firm conviction that Europe will never live in peace so long as
certain problems remain unsolved and certain apprehensions un¬
dispelled, and so long as the peoples of Europe do not find wa>’s and
means of co-operating effectively among themselves.

The reply to this speech took the form of acclamation by the
majority of the Chamber, followed by an overwhelming vote of
confidence. From that moment onwards Briand spoke not for
himself but in the name of France. The initiative taken by
Briand had become the initiative of the French Government.
The entire French nation, irrespective of party loyalties, felt
proud of this initiative and proud of Briand.

I could hardly stand the strain of those last few weeks before
the League assembled. The realization of Pan-Europe had
suddenly come within grasp—almost like a mirage. Then at
last the fateful day dawned: 5th September 1929. It was a
memorable day for Geneva, for Europe and, above all, for Idel
and myself. Geneva basked in brilliant sunshine and its streets
were decorated with the flags of every nation, among them our
own European banner—blue with a red cross on a golden sun.

The large Assembly Hall was filled to overflowing. An
audience of Premiers and Foreign Ministers waited tensely for
the birth of Europe. Idel and I were as happy as small children
under a Christmas tree. Seats had been found for us in the
diplomatic gallery. Many delegates and journalists came up
and shook us by the hand. Amidst the applause of the Assembly,
Briand walked slowly to the rostrum. In spite of his pronounced
stoop, he seemed young and full of energy. Presently he stood
there like a new Columbus about to discover Europe. All our
warmest wishes went out to him.

156 AN IDEA CONQUERS THE WORLD

There was a deadly silence as Briand began to speak. Then
suddenly I was overcome by fright, for Briand spoke of other
things—not of Pan-Europe. Was it possible that under some
last-minute influence he had decided to postpone his initiative?
But after making a pause, he came suddenly to the subject of
Pan-Europe:

For the last few years I have supported an active propaganda
campaign for an idea which has in some quarters been described
as a ‘noble idea’—perhaps because this was thought to sound
better than to call it an ‘unreasonable’ one.

The origin of this idea dates back a good many years, during
which it has thrilled poets and philosophers and helped them gain
the respect of their public. The movement owes its success to the
intrinsic value of the underlying idea. Today Pan-Europe seems
more of a necessity than ever. Publicists, by pooling their resources,
are spreading the idea as widely as possible so that it should pene¬
trate deeply into the consciousness of the peoples of Europe—and I
confess that I have joined the ranks of these publicists. On the other
hand, I have no illusions about the difGculties of such an enterprise;
nor am I in doubt as to the burden which an adventure of this
kind entails for the statesman who sponsors it. But I am convinced
that among peoples like those of Europe, which possess a certain
geographical unity, there must also in the long run be some sort of
political federation. These peoples should be in a position at all
times to enter into informal relations with each other; to make
plans for the protection of their common interests and to reach joint
decisions on problems affecting them all. In brief, they should form
themselves into a closer community so as to be able to withstand
serious threats from within and without. This, gentlemen, is the
type of community which I propose to bring into existence.

There followed a storm of applause. But no one was quite
sure whether this was meant for Briand the orator, or for
Briand the statesman.

Four days later it was Stresemann’s turn to speak. He looked
alarmingly pale and very overworked. His speech was the very
reverse of Briand’s brilliant oratory and rested purely on cold
logic. He appealed to reason rather than sentiment. He
approved Briand’s plan without expressing enthusiasm for it.
To Stresemann Pan-Europe was never an ideal: at best it was

BRIAND ACTS

157

a necessity. He began by disagreeing with Briand about Pan-
Europe being a Utopia. He then proceeded to attack the
grotesque situation in which Europe laboured under more
customs barriers since the war than there had been before. He
also made a plea for European postage stamps and for Euro¬
pean coins. His speech was directed more towards economic
than towards political affairs, but it held out a guarantee of
loyal German co-operation in any attempt to improve the
organization of Europe and establish it on a sounder basis.

Stresemann was followed by BencS, who welcomed Briand’s
initiative in principle but warned his audience about the prac¬
tical difficulties which would be found in its way.

The next speaker was Mussolini’s representative, Scialoja.
He congratulated Briand on his noble initiative without clearly
defining his own Government’s attitude towards it.

Everyone waited for the speech of Arthur Henderson, the
British Foreign Secretary, who followed the debate with great
interest. But Henderson remained seated and did not speak.

On gth September there took place the first unofficial con¬
ference on Pan-Europe attended by representatives of twenty-
seven European countries, most of them Foreign Ministers.
Briand had invited them all to lunch at the Hotel dcs Bergues
so as to have an opportunity of discussing the problems
of Pan-Europe in a more concrete manner and to agree, if
possible, on a common plan of action. All present, including
Henderson, declared themselves in favour of a European
organization within the framework of the League. It was de-
eided to entrust Briand with the drafting of a memorandum
setting out the projected organization. This memorandum was
then to be submitted to all Governments with a request for their
comments. On the basis of the answers received, Briand was to
submit concrete proposals to the next General Assembly in
September 1930.

When the Assembly dispersed at the end of September 1929,
there were good grounds for hoping that in a year’s time some
sort of European federation would come into being. Yet, only a
month later, the future was beginning to appear far less bright.

158 AN IDEA CONQUERS THE WORLD

Two fateful events had occurred, both of which tended to slow
down Briand’s initiative and prepare the way for a Third Reich
and a second world war. These two events were the death of
Strcsemann and the collapse of the New York Stock Exchange.

Strcscmann died suddenly after his return from Geneva. His
speech on Pan-Europe turned out to have been his swan-song.
The German Foreign Minister was visibly exhausted after the
long, courageous struggle he had waged against the unreason¬
ing attitude of the nationalist elements who refused to admit
that his policy alone could lead Germany back into the ranks of
the great powers and that it had already earned him personally
the respect of the entire world. Stresemann’s death was a major
catastrophe not only for Germany but for the whole of Europe.
Had he lived Hitler might never have become Chancellor.
Germany and France would probably have found a way of
composing their differences and the Second World War need
never have occurred.

There was no one in Germany who could take Stresemann’s
place. The post of Foreign Minister was given to his former
colleague. Dr. Curtius. Though anxious to continue Strese¬
mann’s policies, Curtius was not the man to do so: he lacked
Stresemann’s will-power as well as his authority and diplomatic
skill.

Briand had now lost his partner. Hitherto, the policy of
European understanding had rested on twin pillars: Briand and
Stresemann. From now onwards Briand had to carry this heavy
burden alone.

The second catastrophe, which occurred a few days after
Stresemann’s death, was the collapse of the New York Stock
Exchange. No one suspected then what consequences this
would in course of time entail. In later years, however, the
whole tragic chain of events was fully revealed: world economic
crisis—unemployment in Germany—triumph of the Nazi
movement—establishment of the Third Reich—Second World
War.

A further consequence of the world economic crisis was that
all Governments henceforth placed their economies on an

BRIAND ACTS

159

autarchic basis. In the circumstances, the possibility of a
European Customs Union had for all practical purposes to be
ruled out.

The political wind, which had blown fair for the Pan-
European movement since the 1924 elections in France, now
began to veer in the opposite direction at the very moment
when the idea was about to become practical.

The economic crisis seemed at the time to be only a small
dark cloud on the horizon. Nobody suspected that one day the
tempest unleashed by it would all but bring down the whole
edifice of modern civilization. The tragic consequences of
Stresemann’s death were, however, apparent almost at
once.

It looked as if Briand’s initiative was being deflected into a
cul-de-sac. Clearly, Briand could not count on Great Britain’s
support; nor could he hope for more than conditional support
from Italy. If Germany, too, were to lose interest in Pan-Europe
now that Stresemann was dead, then Briand’s initiative must
be considered as having failed. All eyes were therefore turned on
Berlin where a new wave of nationalism was threatening to
undermine the policy of Franco-German reconciliation.

In order to counteract these tendencies I organized a lecture
tour for October 1929 on which Herriot and I were to be the
principal speakers. We travelled to Vienna, Berlin and Prague.
Our object was to gain support for Briand’s initiative. Herriot
spoke in French, I in German. With his powerful oratory and
his great personal charm, Herriot easily won his hearers’ hearts
and had a most favourable press. In Berlin the big hall of the
Kroll Opera House, which was later to be the scene of Hitler’s
Reichstag meetings, was filled to the last seat. After the lecture
my wife and I gave a dinner and reception in Herriot’s honour
at the Kaiserhof Hotel to enable him to meet the political,
economic and cultural leaders of Germany, On the roof of the
Kaiserhof, the hotel which served shortly after as Hitler’s Berlin
headquarters, there were three flags: the tricolor of France, the
flag of the German Reich—and between them our own Cross
of Europe,

l6o AN IDEA CONQ,UERS THE WORLD

Wc met with a particularly friendly reception in Prague.
BeneS organized a big party in our honour at the Palace. He
joined us as third speaker and came out decisively on the side of
Pan-Europe and Briand’s initiative.

By way of introduction, Herriot reminded his listeners that
the first Pan-European initiative had emanated from Prague:
the message which King George of Bohemia once sent to King
Louis of France. The bearers of that message entreated King
Louis to accept the leadership of Pan-Europe, but the King,
though courteous, proved evasive and replied that he might
revert to the suggestion later. Now at last, four and a half cen¬
turies later, the legitimate successors of Louis XI saw fit to revert
to the Bohemian suggestion. Briand’s initiative was in fact no
more than a belated answer to the Bohemian King’s invitation.

In spite of the great success of this lecture tour, our troubles
in the face of growing German nationalism were evidently only
beginning. We decided, therefore, to arrange a second Congress
of Pan-Europe to be held in Berlin on 17th May 1930. This
Congress opened with a pleasant surprise: Briand informed us
that he had chosen 17th May for the publication of his memor¬
andum on the organization of Europe. By this coincidence he
hoped to give public expression to his staunch support of our
movement.

Loucheur led the French delegation and it was from him
that I received the first copies of Briand’s memorandum. When
these eopies were handed to me, they had as yet been seen
neither by the Governments coneemed nor by the press. The
excellent timing of their subsequent release moved the Berlin
Congress right into the centre of world politics.

The German Government, led by Hermann Brbning, the
young Chancellor who had always been a supporter of Pan-
Europe, accorded the Congress a very friendly reception. A
banquet for delegation leaders was held at the Kaiserhof Hotel
—which was once again dressed with the flag of Pan-Europe.

The French Government and press gave every possible
assistance to the Congress. Messages of good-will arrived from
practically all former Premiers;

Poincare; ‘I am following with lively interest all newspaper
reports about the work of the Pan-European Conference and I
note with pleasure that the project which you are striving to
realize is progressing well.’

Painleve: ‘Please convey to your collaborators my best
wishes for the success of their great work of international
reconciliation.’

Caillaux: ‘ I send you my most heartfelt wishes for the success
of your movement. I hope you will succeed in building a new
basis of existence for Europe and for civilization.’

Paul Boncour; ‘I do not need to tell you that I am following
your deliberations with keenest interest.’

Herriot: ‘Please allow me to convey to you my warmest
wishes for the success of this great manifestation.’

The most spectacular political speeches were made by
Loucheur and by Dr. Wirth, German Minister of the Interior
and former Chancellor. In the economic field, the scene was
dominated by Daniel Serruys and Robert Bosch, whilst the
greatest speech in the cultural field was that of Thomas
Mann.

The sensation of the opening day was caused by Colonel L.
S. Amery, the British delegate.

He began by praising the Pan-European idea, referred to
Briand’s initiative as a decisive step towards peace, and then
came to speak of the relationship between Pan-Europe and
Great Britain:

I now want to turn to a question which is surely on every tongue:
what role will Great Britain play in Pan-Europe? How will Great
Britain react to Briand’s suggestions? I will say here and now with¬
out hesitation that it would run clean counter to the interests of
Pan-Europe as well as to those of Great Britain if she were to accept
membership of any form of European Union. From the point of
view of Pan-Europe, such a step would be no less than a catastrophe
. . . Our hearts are not in Europe; we could never share the truly
European point of view nor become real patriots of Europe. Besides,
we could never give up our own patriotism for an Empire which
extends to all parts of the world—not even for the sake of a great
ideal like that of Pan-Europe. Nor could we risk the political and

i62 an idea conq,uers the world

economic estrangement between ourselves and the Dominions, which
would undoubtedly be the consequence of our accession to a European
system. We cannot belong at one and the same time to Pan-Europe
and Pan-Britannia, and no Briton, whatever his political party,
would hesitate even for a second if faced with the choice between
these two alternatives. I think it is possible, however, that our
present Government, most of whose members know nothing about
the Pan-European movement, will give a vaguely affirmative answer
merely out of politeness towards M. Briand. But please do not be
deceived by this. The character of the British people makes it
impossible for us to take part seriously in any Pan-European system.
And every Britain or European who toys with such thoughts renders
a disservice not only to the cause of the British Empire but also to
that of Europe.

All this is, however, far from meaning that we in Great Britain
will not give our warmest sympathy and support to a movement
which can make such a significant contribution to the building up
of a genuine and lasting peace.

Amery subsequently pointed to the fact that the relations
between United Europe and Great Britain should be secured on
the same friendly and good-neighbourly basis as those between
the United States of America and the Dominion of Canada.

A few months earlier, Amery’s friend Winston Churchill had
adopted exactly the same attitude towards Briand’s initiative.
In an article about ‘The United States of Europe’, which the
Saturday Evening Post published on 15th February 1930,
Churchill dealt for the first time with the problem which was
later to absorb his attention so intensively. After describing the
origins of the Pan-European movement, Churchill said:

The League of Nations, from which the United States have so
imprudently—considering their vast and increasing interests—
absented themselves, has perforce become in fact, if not in form,
primarily a European institution. Count Coudenhove-Kalergi pro¬
poses to concentrate European forces, interests and sentiments in a
single branch which, if it grew, would become the trunk itself, and
thus acquire obvious predominance. For think how mighty Europe
is, but fbr its divisions! Let Russia slide back, as Count Kalergi
proposes, and as is already so largely a fact, into Asia. Let the British
Empire, excluded in his plan, realize its own world-spread ideal,
even so, the mass of Europe, once united, once federalized or

BRIAND ACTS

163

partially federalized, once continentally self-conscious—Europe,
with its African and Asiatic possessions and plantations, would
constitute an organism beyond compare.

The attitude of Great Briuin towards European unification or
‘federal links’ would, in the first instance, be determined by her
dominant conception of a United British Empire. Every step that
tends to make Europe more prosperous and more peaceful is con¬
ducive to British interests. We have more to lose by war than any
human organization that has ever existed. The peculiar structure
and distribution of the British Empire or Commonwealth of Nations
is such that our safety has increasingly been found in reconciling
and identifying British interests with the larger interests of the
world. The prosperity of others makes for our own prosperity;
their peace is our tranquillity; their progress smooths our path. We
are bound to further every honest and practical step which the
nations of Europe may make to reduce the barriers which divide
them and to nourish their common interests and their common
welfare. We rejoice at every diminution of the internal tariffs and
martial armaments of Europe. We see nothing but good and hope
in a richer, freer, more contented European commonalty. But we
have our own dream and our own task. We are with Europe, but
not of it. We are linked, but not comprised. We are interested and
associated, but not absorbed. And should European statesmen
address us in the words which were used of old—‘ Wouldest thou be
spoken for to the king, or the captain of the Host? ’—we should reply,
with the Shunamite woman: ‘I dwell among my own people.’

The conception of a United States of Europe is right. Every step
to that end which appeases the obsolete hatred and vanished op¬
pressions, which makes easier the traffic and reciprocal services of
Europe, which encourages its nations to lay aside their precautionary
panoply, is good in itself—is good for them and good for all.

It is, however, imperative that as Europe advances towards
higher international unity there shall be a proportionate growth of
solidarity throughout the British Empire, and also a deepening
self-knowledge and mutual recognition among the English-speaking
people.

Then, without misgiving and without detachment, we can watch
and aid the assuagement of the European tragedy, and without envy
survey their sure and sound approach to mass wealth; being very
conscious that every stride towards European cohesion which is
beneficial to the general welfare will make us a partner in their
good fortune, and that any sinister tendencies will be restrained or
corrected by our united strength.

164 an idea conq,uers the world

Though Churchill and Amery did not express the view
of their government, they certainly expressed that of their
people.

Loucheur was very upset about Amery's speech and tried to
make him modify his attitude. He knew that without Britain’s
active participation Briand’s initiative was condemned to
failure.

I found Briand’s memorandum disappointing. It was patch-
work, diluted and faded. He insisted on the undiminished
sovereignty of all members of the federation, on the subordina¬
tion of Europe to the League and on the predominance of
politics over economics. Nothing in the document made the
slightest appeal to the imagination of the people; it was written
for diplomats and constitutional lawyers.

The world press received the memorandum rather critically.
So did the twenty-six nations whose replies were published one
by one. These replies actually did more to damp our hopes than
the memorandum itself. Many countries demanded the in¬
clusion of Russia and Turkey, neither of which was then a
member of the League. Most replies made the participation of
Great Britain a condicio sine qua non. But the British reply was
evasive. The British Government wanted neither to be excluded
from Europe nor to be included in it. It was anxious only to
prevent a European federal union from being set up. It there¬
fore proposed to limit the intended organism to a European
Committee of the League of Nations.

The replies of Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark, the Nether¬
lands and Portugal seemed to share the British point of view.
They were full of warnings against radical proposals and solu¬
tions. Italy’s attitude was more than critical; it dismissed all
Briand’s technical proposals en bloc.

The French thesis about the predominance of politics over
economics came under particularly heavy fire. Some replies
stressed the interlocking relationship between the two, others
insisted on the absolute predominance of economics.

In spite of these conflicting views, all twenty-six Govern¬
ments declared themselves ready to co-operate with France on

BRIAND ACTS 165

a solution of the European problem within the framework of
the League.

Early in September 1930 the Governments held, at Geneva,
their first official conference on Europe. The enthusiasm which
had reigned only a year earlier was now gone. The discussions
about European problems had revealed that the things which
divided countries were greater than those which united them.
Britain’s opposition had come to the surface. Most govern¬
ments seemed determined to get as much as possible out of
Pan-Europe without contributing anything to it, least of all by
sacrifice. The French decision to create a viable organism
conflicted directly with Britain’s determination not to let this
happen on any account.

Right into the middle of these unpleasant and unproductive
negotiations there fell, like a bomb, the news of the German
elections held on 14th September: Hitler’s party had increased
its strength tenfold, whilst Stresemann’s had been decimated.

On that day I met Dr. Curtius and some of his colleagues.
They slipped like ghosts along the corridors of the League
building. They were still representatives of the Reich Govern¬
ment—but no longer of the German people.

The policy of Franco-German reconciliation, which Briand
had defended for five years, suffered a heavy blow. Criticism of
Briand grew louder and more aggressive. How could France
continue to rely on a Germany whose Chancellor might to¬
morrow be Adolf Hider? And how could France afford to
adopt a European policy opposed to that of Great Britain,
when tomorrow the two countries might be called upon to
co-operate against German aggression?

Briand’s initiative had been dealt its death-blow by Hitler’s
electoral victory. It was now easy for Britain to assert her point
of view. Instead of a confederation of European states, it was
decided to set up a Study Group on European Union.

Briand still hoped to salvage his project by creating a stand¬
ing European Secretariat based on Geneva. This Secretariat
might revive his initiative in more favourable circumstances.
However, even this suggestion proved unacceptable to Great

l66 AN IDEA CONQ,UERS THE WORLD

Britain. Her representatives proposed that the danger of
duplication between the League and the European Secretariat
might be avoided by asking Sir Eric Drummond, the League’s
Secretary-General, also to assume the direction of the Secretariat.
This proposal was accepted—and the European Secretariat
vanished.

In January the Study Group held its first meeting, but
achieved no result worth mentioning. It proved impossible to
reach agreement on any material point on the agenda. From
then onwards the Study Group lived a shadowy existence until
a few years’ later it disappeared together with the League,
forgotten and unmourned.

Since Hitler’s victory at the polls, not only Briand’s policy
but also his position were seriously undermined. His European
initiative had clearly miscarried. A few months later a serious
Franco-German conflict broke out over the decision of the Reich
Government, prompted no doubt by the need to regain its
vanishing prestige, to conclude a Customs Union with Austria.
Briand finally succeeded in having this union annulled. But
confidence between Paris and Berlin had been irreparably
shattered.

Soon after, Briand was a candidate for the presidency of the
Republic. In taking this step, he followed the advice of disloyal
friends and allowed himself to be tempted by false promises. He
was defeated. A few months later, all his prestige gone, he was
quietly pushed out of the Government.

In September 1931 I met Briand again in Geneva: he was a
tired and broken man. He was determined to devote the rest
of his life to Pan-Europe. His eyes shone more brightly than
ever. He had turned from fighter into martyr. On the rostrum of
the League he proclaimed his intention to make a pilgrimage
through the countries of Europe and preach peace. The prophet
within him saw the second world war rapidly approaching;
with all his might he wanted to resist it.

I discussed with him the organization of his peace tour, on
which I was to accompany him. Since the Governments had
failed us in the matter of Pan-Europe, we wanted to make a

BRIAND ACTS

167

direct appeal to the peoples for the unification of Europe. The
peoples had already acclaimed Briand, the peacemaker, with
enthusiasm: they were determined to see him succeed. Before
leaving I handed Briand a small Pan-European pennant,
which Idcl had specially given me for him. He was touched and
promised to hoist it on his fishing-vessel in Cocherel. Next
morning Idel received a wonderful bunch of red roses from
Briand. They were his final greeting. I never saw him again.
On 7th March 1932, Briand passed away, lonely and powerless,
exhausted by his untiring and courageous battle for peace.

CHAPTER XVII

AN ISLAND OF PEACE

Our frequent journeys to Switzerland helped us to become
increasingly familiar with the beauties of the Swiss country¬
side.

One day we found ourselves, quite by chance, in the Saanen-
land, at the south-western end of the Canton of Berne and near
the line dividing French- from German-speaking Switzerland.
The Saanenland, with some six thousand inhabitants, forms
part of the Bernese Oberland and lies about one hundred miles
east of Geneva. Its ‘capital’, Saanen, is a picturesque village
with wooden chalets carved and painted on all sides. The old
Protestant church at the centre is decorated with beautiful and
rare medieval frescoes which were only recently restored to
view. The vicar and his wife arc the spiritual and moral
leaders of that little community; both are pacifists in the
noblest sense of that word and staunch supporters of Pan-
Europe. To show his sympathy with our movement. Pastor
Lauterburg had the Pan-European insignia, together with my
initials, affixed in the church. Apart from Saanen the region
has only one other village of any size: Gstaad, well-knovm as an
international winter-sports resort.

Cattle raising and dairy farming are the principal occupa¬
tions of the local people. The superb cattle of the neighbouring
Simmenthal and the snow-white goats of the Saanenland itself
are exported to many parts of the world. The surrounding
mountainside is covered with forests and meadows. The whole
landscape seems as peaceful as the people who inhabit it. Since
1928 we had been in the habit of spending a few weeks of every
year, either immediately before or immediately after the
Assembly of the League, in this lovely and unspoilt comer of
the Swiss highlands. In the first few years we put up at a farm¬
house just above Saanenmoser—on the upper slopes, 1,400
metres above sea level. We made friends with many of the local
168

AN ISLAND OF PEACE 169

farmer. They soon found out that we were keen admirers of
local craftsmanship and brought us old chests and other pieces
of furniture which had been stowed away in their lofe for
years.

In the summer of 1931 we happened to hear that two
especially attractive antique doors were on sale in the neigh¬
bouring village of Gruben. A few days later we paid a visit to
this little village, which lies on the road from Saanenmoser to
Gstaad and which, oddly enough, we had never set foot in
before. Gruben is really not so much a village as a collection of
scattered farms. It lies at the very heart of the Saanenland, on
the lower slopes of the Hornberg.

A friendly young farmer led us into the parlour. There we
were shown the two old doors, still in their original frame—and
clearly the pride of the household. The basic colour was a
bluish-grey and on this had been painted, in bright colours and
sweeping lines, a pattern of somewhat stylized flowers, birds
and cows. We had really expected to find the doors stowed
away in the loft. Since we now found they were being used, my
wife told the owner that she would on no account wish to have
them taken out of their frame. She even felt that they should
not be sold at all* as without them the house would not be half
as attractive. ‘In that case, why don’t you buy the whole
house?’ was the somewhat astonishing reply of our farmer
friend. We took this to be a joke and laughed. But then we
walked over to the window and looked at the panorama. It was
a breath-taking sight. Facing us was the impressive chain of the
Bernese Alps, crowned by the Wildhorn and the Oldenhorn
with their respective rocks and glaciers. Inside this little private
world, surrounded by snow-covered mountains, lay long, gentle
slopes displaying every shade of green, from the light-green
covering of the meadows to the dark-green texture of the pine
woods. Immediately in front of the house was a large orchard,
containing all kinds of trees and surrounded by a sparkling
mountain stream. As we looked out on the Saanenland from the
farmhouse window, it seemed like a huge arena under a brilliant
blue sky.

170 AN IDEA CONQ,OERS THE WORLD

We asked the farmer whether he really wanted to sell his
house. He began to tell us his story. It appeared that he had
only bought this old place a few months earlier. Now he was on
the point of marrying and therefore anxious to sell the house
again so as to be able to settle further away from his parental
home. A few days later we signed the contract. Almost before
we knew it, we had become owners of a Swiss farmhouse built
in 1764 and complete with stables, bams and a large meadow.

In the spring of the following year we began to rebuild the
house. Meanwhile we had discussed and agreed on a design for
it with our friend Professor Oskar Kaufmann, the famous Berlin
theatrical architect. It is notoriously more difficult to alter the
structure of an existing house than to build a new one. It was
not long before we too had this experience. The work of re¬
building went on through eight long summers. In winter the
house had to be closed and all work suspended. Then in the
early summer of each year we would return to the Saanenland
and supervise the building activities.

The main difficulty was how to enlarge the house without
destroying its delightful proportions. Hence, we had to extend
and lift it in all three dimensions. The stable and bam which
used to have a common wall with the farmhouse, were disman¬
tled and re-erected some way down the field. This meant that
we had now to find a new wall to close in our house on the north
side and that this wall would have to harmonize with the rest of
the building.

After much searching we found such a wall in the neighbour¬
ing small town of Chateau d’Oex. Not long ago the most beauti¬
ful house in the place had been dismantled. This house
dated back to 1672 and had been built by a prosperous captain
of the militia. The front of the house consisted of a beautiful
carved facade which happened to correspond exactly to the
dimensions of our own building. After long and difficult negotia¬
tions we acquired it for use in place of the dismantled north
wall. As result, our house now has a painted German inscription
on the south side and a carved French inscription on the north
side.

AN ISLAND OF PEACE I7I

Every summer Oskar Kaufmann came to help us with the
rebuilding. My brother-in-law Arthur,' Idel’s eldest brother,
also gave us the benefit of his considerable skill and taste in
restoration matters. Erica, who had meanwhile continued her
studies of horticulture and landscape gardening, designed a
rockery all around the house which she proceeded to fill with
a selection of all the Alpine flora of the Bernese Oberland.
This rockery merged imperceptibly with the meadows around it,
just as these meadows in turn merged with the landscape of the
Saanenland.

Though we all lent a hand, it was really Idel who created
the house. She took personal charge of the rebuilding operations
and soon mastered all the complicated technical details involved.
Not a day passed without some new problem.One day it was a
question of extending an old beam that was found to be too
short. Another day a radiator might have to be concealed
behind an antique chest or an electric wire behind a specially
fitted ledge. Then came the problem of inserting an old oak
staircase we had acquired and of finding dark-red Glockenthal
tiles for the roof. There was no difficulty which Idel’s creative
imagination could not resolve in one way or another, and the
intuition of her taste became our guide throughout this pro¬
tracted and somewhat unusual building operation.

Now the old farmhouse continues to stand there, surrounded
by flowers and fruit trees on either side—and outwardly indis¬
tinguishable from the other houses of the neighbourhood. Its
interior, however, has acquired the character of a comfortable
little hunting-lodge. Somehow Idel contrived to blend the
many different materials she used into an organic and lively
whole. The trophies of local craftsmanship which we had
collected on our various journeys harmonized perfectly in this
atmosphere. Embroideries and rugs from Hungary and Yugo¬
slavia lie alongside carved ornaments of Swiss and Tyrolean

* Arthur had been working as an expert on restoration in all the old museums
of Europe. He had invented a new method of restoring paintings with wax colours
which Helmuth Ruhemann, the curator of the Kaiser Friedrich Museum in
Berlin, described in the international museum publication Mouseion as 'utu
methode de reslauralion d la cire neutre’. See Mouseion, Volumes 17-18 published by
the Institute of Intellectual Co-operation, Paris, tgga.

172 AN IDEA CONQ,UERS THE WORLD

origin. Even Kabylc ceramics from the Atlas Mountains seem to
blend easily with these products of peasant art. Nor is this
surprising, since farming communities all over the world till
the same earth under the same sun—disregarding linguistic
and geographical barriers. They all have the same worries and
nurse the same hopes. Little wonder, therefore, that they should
all use the same artistic symbols: the sun, the moon, the stars,
stylized flowers and birds, simple geometrical figures, lively
colours and vigorous forms.

Below a thin and temporary veneer of urban art, the eternal
peasantry of Europe represents a great cultural entity.

Here in this oasis of peace, I found enough leisure every
summer to write my books. In 1934 I published Contemporary
Anti-Semitism, a discussion of the National Socialist theory of
race. I meant it to be a sequel to my father’s book on the same
subject, which I revised and brought up to date at about thesame
time. In 1935 I published Europe Without Misery, an anthology
of my own lectures and articles. In 1936 I wrote The Awakening
of Europe, a history of the Pan-European idea from the Crusades
to the present day. The following year another book of mine ap¬
peared, The Totalitarian State Against Man —this was intended as a
philosophical and historical analysis of Fascism, National Social¬
ism and Bolshevism—the three degrees of Totalitarianism. In it
I also dealt, by way of contrast, with the concept of free man,
balanced and complete within himself, whose modern prototype
is the British gentleman. The book opens with the words; ‘ Man
is a creature of God—the State is a creature of Man’; on this
simple proposition the book is founded.

The room which I made my study faces both south and west.
In the south my view takes in parts of the canton of Vallais—
behind snow-covered mountains. In the west I have a panorama
of farmhouses, spread around the village of Rougemont in the
canton of Vaud.

Rougemont lies only a few kilometres from Saanen. It is
reached by a lovely, shaded road along the banks of the River
Saane—which here assumes quite imperceptibly its French
title ‘ la Sarine ’. There are no Customs officials at this frontier

AN ISLAND OF PEACE

m

between German and Latin Europe which is at the same time
the frontier between the cantons of Berne and Vaud. There is no
barbed-wire fence, no wooden barrier, no bureau de change for
currencies. Everyone is free to cross this unguarded and invisible
frontier without formality. No hatred divides the German-
speaking Swiss from their French-speaking compatriots. On
the contrary, the young people of the Saancnland arc frequently
sent to the canton of Vaud—there to learn ‘the language’:
French.

This frontier is no barrier to romance or marriage, to games
or conviviality. It is not uncommon, of course, for people of
Vaud to make fun of their German-speaking neighbours, nor
for the latter to retaliate in kind. But the differences between
them and the many local rivalries which exist act only as an
incentive to greater effort, never as a ground for hatred. As one
walks along the road from Saanen to Rougemont, the farm¬
houses on either side all seem to be of one type. But halfway
down the road the inscriptions on the front of these houses
suddenly appear in a different language and the children sing
in French instead of German. Their games, however, are the
same.

I can never cross this invisible frontier without thinking of
the blood and tears which have been shed further north on that
other frontier between German and Latin Europe and of the
efforts made through the centuries to shift this frontier by means
of mass destruction and brute force.

In Switzerland one sees only too well how Germans and
French can live peacefully together. One also realizes that it is
by no means Utopian to hope that one day the frontier between
Germany and France may become just as invisible as that be¬
tween the cantons of Berne and Vaud, between Saanen and
Rougemont, is at this very moment.

The longer I live here the greater grows my admiration for
the political achievements of this small nation, which has made
common sense a cardinal principle of its system of government.
For on geographical grounds Switzerland seemed destined
to be the arena of European conflicts. Her lack of raw materials.

174 an idea conquers the world

and the poor quality of her soil seemed to condemn her to a

life of eternal poverty.

But the Swiss took up this challenge with eagerness. Their
common sense and hard work now enables them to look back
upon a century of uninterrupted peace. Moreover, notwith¬
standing their lack of colonial territories, raw materials and sea
communications, they have become the most prosperous
nation in Europe. They have solved the problem which caused
the Hapsburg Monarchy to founder and perish: the problem of
how many different races can live together harmoniously in
the enjoyment of equal rights.

This Swiss invention is in no way patented. The whole of
Europe is free to emulate it. The Swiss Federal Constitution
is no sealed book. Everyone may copy from it the simple and
sensible formulae which have given Switzerland peace, freedom
and prosperity. Thus the formula for the United States of
Europe need not be invented afresh. Ninety per cent of the
questions which many Europeans regard as insoluble have here
been solved in a sensible and practical manner.

If Germany, France and Italy were tomorrow to join the
Swiss confederation, then the European question would be
solved at once and European mothers need no longer tremble at
the thought of losing their sons in war. The Swiss example also
refutes the claim often advanced by the opponents of Pan-
Europe: that the unification of Europe would destroy the separ¬
ate cultures of its member states. For in Switzerland every
canton has retained its individuality and its local patriotism.
Even the language and cultural heritage of the forty thousand
Rhacto-Romans in the Orisons are given full opportunity to
develop and perpetuate themselves. In every valley, local
traditions are jealously guarded, and the local dialect carefully
nursed. In a sense, the Saanenland is itself a small republic
within the canton of Berne and within the wider framework of
the Swiss confederation.

In the midst of a nationalistic continent, Switzerland is
nothing short of a miracle. If the country did not exist, no one
would believe that anything like it could ever be created. Because

AN ISLAND .OF PEACE I75

the world now accepts Switzerland as a reality, everyone
takes this miracle for granted. Switzerland is the reverse of
nationalistic Europe. By her example she shows the other
nations what Europe could be if only she made the effort.
Young Europeans of all nations, steeped in nationalistic
traditions, should be encouraged to make a pilgrimage to
Switzerland—not only to enjoy her natural beauties, but to
learn how a free and peaceful Europe could and should be
organized.

Whilst Europe moved inexorably towards the Second World
War, I felt myself more deeply attached than ever to that
country, whose patriotism is an expression of its love of liberty
and at the same time of its faith in the highest values of Western
culture. For their deep and genuine love of peace in no way
weakens the determination of the people of Switzerland to
fight to the utmost for the preservation of their liberties. Their
pacifism is of a heroic kind. More than any formal policy of
neutrality, this heroic pacifism, generated during long struggles
in the defence of freedom, has saved Switzerland’s peace
through two world wars.

At present this small but outstanding country at the very
centre of the Continent is a beacon of peace and freedom in
the midst of a turbulent sea, showing all Europeans the way to a
better and more prosperous future.

CHAPTER XVIII

CROSSING HITLER’S PATH

Briand’s death—after the failure of his Pan-European initia¬
tive—was a heavy blow to our movement, doubly so because
it coincided with the growing danger of Hitler seizing power in
Germany. Heavy clouds had been hanging over Germany and
Europe ever since Bruning’s fall from power. International
confidence was at a low ebb and all endeavours seemed frus¬
trated by the prevailing sense of uncertainty. The Pan-Euro¬
pean movement, too, began to live in the shadow of Hitler’s
struggle for power. Berlin became a kind of battle-ground for
the future of Europe. No Frenchman wanted closer tics with
Germany so long as there was any danger of Hitler becoming
Chancellor in Berlin.

After the breakdown of the effort which various govern¬
ments had made towards the creation of Pan-Europe, the only
way seemed for the peoples to seize the initiative themselves.
An appeal had in particular to be made to the German people
to choose between nationalism and Pan-Europe; other nations
would then have to support those Germans who were good Euro¬
peans in their life-and-death struggle against nationalism,
dictatorship and war.

To carry out this reorganization I convened the third Con¬
gress of Pan-Europe. It was to meet in Switzerland where it
would be free from all governmental influences. Svwtzerland
had for a long time occupied a leading position in our move¬
ment. Our central office in Zurich was directed by three men who
had set their minds firmly on the achievement of our aims: Dr.
Conrad Staehclin, Robert H. Stehli and Edgar Griedcr. These
men were in turn supported by a committee of outstanding
representatives of the political, economic and cultural life of
the country. Among the leading pan-Europeans in Switzerland
was Dr. Hans Sulzer, a well-known industrialbt whom we had
first met when he was Swiss Minister in Weishington.

176

CROSSING hitler’s PATH I77

From ist to 4th October 1932 the third Congress of Pan-
Europe met in the large, yet overcrowded, exhibition hall of
the Basle International Fair. The brilliant organization
of the Congress did much credit to Dr. Meile, the Fair’s general
manager.

Our discussions revolved mainly round the possible formation
of a European popular movement based on a European Party.
Though the idea was accepted in principle, it was agreed to post¬
pone its execution until the German crisis had been solved in a
democratic way. For it was clear that there would be no room
for a European Party in a Hitlerite Germany; nor would the
formation of such a party find favour in other countries as long
as Germany had not decided for Europe and against Hitler.

The future of Pan-Europe thus depended primarily upon
political developments inside Germany.

Around Christmas 1932 I received an invitation from the
S. S. S. Club in Berlin to deliver a lecture to them at the Hotel
Kaiserhof on 30th January 1933. The S. S. S. Club was Ger¬
many’s leading political club. It was named after its three
founder-presidents: General von Seeckt—the creator of the
Reichswehr, Dr. Walter Simons—President of the Supreme
Court, and Dr. Wilhelm Solf—a former Foreign Minister. The
club prided itself on its strictly non-political status.

Slowly ploughing our way through deep snow, we motored up
from Switzerland through the Tyrol and Bavaria and reached
Berlin in the first days of 1933. There were only a few swastika
flags to be seen. Altogether it seemed as if the National Socialist
movement had passed its peak and was at last on the decline.

Our friends in Berlin confirmed this. The reduction in the
National Socialist vote at the last elections and the catastrophic
state of the Party’s finances fed rumours of an impending Party
crisis. Everyone seemed confident that President Hindenburg,
assisted by his resourceful Chancellor, General von Schleicher,
and backed by the army, a Reichstag majority and the trade
unions, would avert Hitler’s seizure of power and that the next
elections would finally dispose of the whole National Socialist
danger.

178 AN IDEA CONQUERS THE WORLD

Dr. Hjalmar Schacht saw the situation in a different light.
He accomplished the extraordinary feat of remaining a sup¬
porter of Pan-Europe notwithstanding his admiration for
Hitler. In his buoyant way, he told me; ‘In three months’ time,
Hitler will have become Chancellor. But don’t worry; he is the
only man able to reconcile Germany with the Western Powers.
You will s^e: one day Hitler will achieve the uniEcation of
Europe.’ Schacht brushed aside my objection that Hitler’s
coming to power would lead to a break between Germany and
the West. ‘Hitler alone can create Pan-Europe,’ he said,
with an air of profound conviction, ‘because he alone has no
opposition to fear from the extreme right. Stresemann and
Briining failed because their efforts were constantly frustrated
by elements on the right. Only Hitler can afford to ignore this
opposition; and that is why he alone will succeed in setting up
peaceful co-operation among European states.’

The first part of Schacht’s prophecy was to be fulfilled very
swiftly. A few days after our conversation, news reached me
from Cologne that Hitler and von Papen, who had hitherto
been on the worst of terms, met at the house of von Schroeder,
the banker, and decided to join forces against the established
Government.

I had known von Papen for years. He had never joined our
movement, but had always declared himself in favour of under¬
standing and co-operation with France. During the summer of
1932, while he was German Chancellor and represented the
Republic at the Lausanne Reparations Conference, he once
asked me to lunch with him. Hitler was our main topic of con¬
versation. Papen regarded him as a bloated demagogue of no
standing whatsoever, and was confident that he could deal with
him easily. In the realm of foreign policy, he welcomed the
threat of a Third Reich as a means of exerting pressure on
France. By using this weapon he hoped eventually to secure
complete equality for Germany. He also hoped soon to reach an
understanding with France, to overcome the menace of Hitler
and thus to pave the way for a United Europe.

I never had contact with Hitler and his senior colleagues in

CROSSING hitler’s PATH

179

the Party. In 1932 Goering gave an interview to a Swedish
newspaper and was asked what he thought of Pan-Europe. His
somewhat surprising reply was: ‘I am all in favour of Pan-
Europe, but not the Pan-Europe of Coudcnhove-Kalergi.’

On 29th January 1933 President Hindenburg dismissed his
Government and charged Hitler with the formation of a new
Cabinet. To secure the support of conservative and catholic
circles in Parliament,von Papen was asked to be Vice-Chancellor.
On the following day the new Government was formed. The
Weimar Republic was dead, the Third Reich well on its way.

Many friends advised me to cancel my lecture. When I
telephoned the manager of the Hotel Kaiserhof, his reply was:
‘Yes, the lecture will take place, but the audience will have to
use a side entrance, since the main entrance is reserved for
members of the new Government.’

That evening the Kaiserhof, Hitler’s personal residence,
was like a beehive, swarming with innumerable brown bees.
Within a few hours the hotel had become the hub of Germany.
With great difficulty we blazed a trail to the lecture hall through
cordons of police and uniformed guards.

Once inside the hall reserved for the club, we noticed hardly
anything of the bustle and excitement outside. Every table was
fully booked. Seeckt, Simons and Solf were present and so were
most other members of the elub. Throughout the assembled
company, there was a deep awareness of the historical signifi¬
cance of that day’s events.

During the discussion which followed my lecture, the doctrine
of National Socialism came under heavy fire. I expressed the
hope that one day Pan-Europe would triumph over all its
nationalist opponents.

It was a strange thought that, even while we met, the founda¬
tions of the Third Reich were being laid under the same roof.
My speech turned out to be our movement’s swan-song in
Germany. A European Party was now out of the question and
for the time being Hitler had clearly triumphed over Pan-
Europe. As I left the Kaiserhof through a thick throng of Brown-
shirts, Berlin seemed to have changed completely. The streets

l80 AN IDEA CONQ,UERS THE WORLD

reverberated with the monotonous goosestep of marching
Brownshirt battalions and husky voices chanted triumphantly
the battie song of Horst Wessel.

Hitler’s war against Europe lasted twenty-six years, from
1919 to 1945. His first attempt at the conquest of Germany was
foiled in November 1923; ten years later he became undisputed
master of the Third Reich. Thereafter, it took him five years
to conquer Austria, another year to reduce Czechoslavakia and
three more years before the whole of Europe from the Pyrenees
to the Caucasus lay prostrate at his feet. Only in November
1942 did the tide begin to turn; then, within two and a half
years. Hitler’s millennium perished.

His legendary rise to power was due mainly to two events:
the Peace Treaty of Versailles and the Munich Commune. The
popular movement launched by him was a protest against the
work of two men: Clemenceau and Lenin. The struggle against
the Versailles Treaty secured him a powerful follovnng among
the masses, whilst the struggle against Bolshevism brought the
financial support he needed to organize and arm these masses.
Hitler first turned against Lenin’s ideology in Germany, then
against Clemenceau’s in Europe. But in the end, as it turned out,
the heirs of Lenin and Clemenceau joined forces to crush him.

There is no doubt that Hitler’s popularity rested mainly on
the fanatical struggle which he waged against the Versailles
Treaty. He modelled his early actions on Mustapha Kemal, the
Turkish leader, who began by resisting the Treaty of Sevres and
then, carried away by the nationalist feeling of his followers,
tore up that treaty altogether and negotiated in its place the
much more lenient Treaty of Lausanne.

Hitler cannot in any real sense be credited with the creation
of the nationalist protest against the Versailles Treaty. The
famous French historian and patriot, Jacques Bainville, bears
witness to the fact that Hitler merely benefited from a feeling
which already existed.

In his book The Political Consequences of the Peace Treaty Bain¬
ville predicts with prophetic clarity the political development of
Europe in the two decades following the Versailles Treaty. His

CROSSING hitler’s PATH l8l

book was published in 1919, before the name of Hitler had
emerged on the political horizon.

Just as Mustapha Kemal served as a model in Hitler’s struggle
against the Peace Treaty, so Mussolini was used as a prototype
in the battle against Bolshevism. European anti-Communism
was the natural reaction against Lenin’s attempt to conquer
Europe and destroy by world revolution the liberal Christian
civilization which had its roots on that continent. The counter¬
revolution broke out simultaneously in Hungary, Bavaria and
Italy; then step by step it conquered half of Europe. The politi¬
cal pendulum was definitely swinging back and it seemed as if
National Socialism was merely the German version of this
general phenomenon.

Fascism, as it appeared in Germany, was closely linked with
the theory of race. Germans were taught to think in terms of a
racial hierarchy, a pyramid of races comprising the whole of
humanity with the blond races at the summit and the negroid
races at the base. All other races, from the dark-haired Medi¬
terranean types to the chocolate-coloured Indians are con¬
ceived as lying between these two extremes, of which the upper
is destined always to rule and the lower always to be ruled.
This racial doctrine is an anthropological myth without
scientific foundation. Such roots as it has are in the Bible, where
Noah is said to have placed a curse on the heirs of his
ungrateful son Cham. Centuries later the myth was revived by
the pseudo-scientific daydreaming of Gobincau and Chamber-
lain.

The most astonishing thing about this racial theory is the
importance given to pigmentation as a factor in determining
the value of a race or an individual. The adoration of blond
beings probably has its origin in the sun-worship of the pre-
Christian era. This cult was based on a system of simple
antitheses: light and darkness, day and night, good and bad,
blond and black. The blond man and woman with golden hair
was looked upon as an earthly incarnation of the sun’s golden
rays, just as the lion with its long mane has from time immem¬
orial been the symbol of the sun in the animal kingdom.

i82 an idea conq,uers the world

This dualistic conception has always had a place in the sub¬
conscious of the German people- Their village churches display
blond angels and black-haired devils. Long before Hitler,
Germans would have thought it absurd to present Lohengrin
and Elsa on the stage in black wigs or Telramund and Ortrud
in fair ones, though, as a Friesian, Ortrud would have had an
obvious claim to ash-blond hair.

National Socialism simply brought this latent tendency into
the forefront of the conscious mind. It is ^ways easy to convince
people of theories which seem to flatter them. Hider, therefore,
had no difficulty in convincing the German people that they
were the aristocrats and natural leaders of the human race.

Before this theory could become popular, there had also to
be a hostile race at the other end of the scale. For the more
people can look down on others the more superior they will feel
themselves. As there are no Negroes in Germany, National
Socialism invented an ersatz Negro, the Jew. In this respect, the
Nazis were greatly helped by the existence of a kind of tradi¬
tional anti-Semitism. There was no need to create anti-Semitic
feeling; it only had to be properly exploited and combined with
anti-Bolshevism.

One of the consequences of this fanatical anti-Semitic cam¬
paign was the total rejection of Christianity—itself a product of
the Jews—and of its moral values. The Hebrew-Christian moral
code, as defined in the Bible, was supplanted by the twin
Darwinian principles: the struggle for existence and the survival
of the fittest. In the spirit of Nietzsche’s teachings, the fittest
became the best, whilst cruelty and force took the place of
humanity and justice in the scale of moral values.

In this manner, the Nazis created a biological pseudo¬
religion not unlike the economic pseudo-religion created by
Bolshevism. Both creeds tended to bring out the best as well as
the worst in their followers: heroic self-sacrifice on the one hand,
bestial cruelty on the other. These instincts were duly mar¬
shalled by the leaders to serve political ends.

The state of semi-education in which modern Germany
found itself provided an ideal breeding-ground for National

CROSSING hitler’s PATH

183

Socialism. It was a soothing creed for a people with rudimentary
scientific knowledge; for a people who had read some of their
own classics, but knew nothing of the great poets and thinkers of
other nations and who had thus become convinced that their
race alone possessed the secret of culture, whilst all other races
were either barbarian or decadent.

Hitler’s propaganda appealed quite deliberately to men’s
emotions as distinct from their brains. It sought to put into
practice Schopenhauer’s philosophy as expressed in Welt als
Wille und Vorstellung: to influence men’s actions and imagina¬
tion without paying too much attention to the dictates of reason
and logic.

The use of mass hypnotism for propaganda purposes is most
successful at times of crisis. When National Socialism made its
bid for power, millions of Germans had been thrown completely
off their balance: middle-class families had sunk to the level
of the proletariat, whilst working-class families were without
work. The Third Reich became the last hope of the stranded,
of those who had lost their social status, and of those rootless
beings who were seeking a new basis for an existence that had
become meaningless. Looked at in this light. National Social¬
ism seemed a repetition on a gigantic scale of Catilina’s con¬
spiracy. It differed from Socialism, which was a class movement
in the tradition of that of the Gracchi, and from Bolshevism,
whose classical prototype was the revolution of Spartacus.

The economic background of the Hitler movement becomes
apparent when one recalls that Hitler’s two revolutions co¬
incided with Germany’s two great economic crises: the inflation
of 1923 and the recession of the early 1930’s, with its wave of
unemployment. During the six intervening years, which were
relatively prosperous for Germany, the Hitler movement was
virtually non-existent.

During these years we often visited Germany. I gave many
public lectures on Pan-Europe. Once, in Oldenburg, an attempt
was made to stop me. A group of young National Socialists
suddenly broke out into the following chorus: ‘ Poincard said:
there are twenty million Germans too many!’ I answered; ‘I

184 AN IDEA CONQ,UERS THE WORLD

have always heard it said that hospitality is one of the great
German virtues. Here I am as your guest at the very heart of
Germany. I would ask you to act accordingly.’ The chorus died
down, and when my lecture was over there was applause from
every part of the hall.

Three weeks after the formation of the Third Reich we left
Berlin for Prague. I asked Masaryk, who had greater moral
authority than any other European statesman, to give a series of
propaganda talks on human freedom over the Prague radio—as
an antidote to the Nazi campaign. I felt sure that his talks
would be welcomed by millions of Germans who could other¬
wise listen to nothing but Nazi propaganda. Masaryk liked the
idea. He said he would think about it and inform me of his
decision.

We spoke about Hitler. Masaryk had of course studied Mein
KampJ carefully. ‘ This man Hitler, ’ he said, ‘ is not altogether a
fool. He certainly has a remarkable gift of observation and his
description of pre-war Vienna is not at all bad. But I must con¬
fess that some chapters leave me like a calf facing a new barn¬
door.’

Two weeks later I received a long, cordial letter in Masaryk’s
beautiful handwriting: he had discussed the proposed radio
campaign with his collaborators, but was unfortunately not in a
position to follow my suggestion.

Back in Vienna, we heard of the Reichstag fire and of the
reign of terror which had set in. Our minds went back to the
film about Nero which we had seen in Berlin two months
earlier. In this film, which had gone down well in Germany,
Tigellinus advises Nero to set Rome on fire, to put the blame
for this on the Christians and to use this as a pretext for annihil¬
ating them. I would not be surprised if it had been this film
which put the idea of a Reichstag fire into the Nazi leaders’
heads.

A few days later General Haushofer from Munich paid us a
visit. We had known him for years. In his Geo-political Review
he had always found room for a friendly word about Pan-
Europe which seemed to him to accord with his own ideas. On

CROSSING hitler’s PATH 185

the evening when we founded our Munich group he and
Thomas Mann had sat on either side of my wife at dinner.

In spite of his geo-political leanings, Haushofer remained a
Bavarian monarchist. He regarded the Third Reich very critic¬
ally and described Hitler, whom he knew personally, as a
typical product of half-education. On the other hand, he had a
number of good things to say about Rudolf Hess. He told the
story of how, after Hitler’s abortive coup d’etat in 1923, Hess
had for weeks remained a fugitive in his house, where he hid
him from the police. Tf Hess is really such a nice man,’ I said,
‘how is it that he became a Nazi?’ Haushofer was not stuck for
an answer: ‘He just happened to meet Hitler—so he became a
Nazi. If he had met you, he would have become a supporter of
Pan-Europe.’

In this connection I could not help telling Haushofer how
one day in the 1920’s I gave the young receptionist at the Park
Hotel in Munich a copy of my book Pan-Europe. Some days
later I saw him again. ‘Pan-Europe is a great idea,’ he said,
‘even greater, I think, than anti-Semitism.’ For this young man,
Hider’s anti-Semitism had so far evidently been the climax of
political wisdom. Suddenly it began to dawn on him that there
might be more important things worth striving for in this
world, greater problems and higher aims. His answer gave me
new hope that the Pan-Europcan idea might achieve more in
the field of denazification than all the negative experiments
which were being made in that direction.

CHAPTER XIX

I CALL ON MUSSOLINI

Hitler’s seizure of power in Germany made the prospects of
Pan-Europe seem almost hopeless. The movement had scarcely
recovered from the miscarriage of Briand’s initiative. Now its
worst enemy had become absolute master over Germany.
The German branch of the Union was dissolved and pro¬
scribed; my books were destroyed. Robert Bosch and the Ger¬
man members of our promotion syndicate were compelled to
resign.

Even outside Germany faith in the Pan-European ideal had
weakened noticeably. No one wanted—nor for that matter,
was able—to co-operate constructively with the Third Reich;
the alternative of waiting for its collapse seemed utterly un¬
realistic.

Britain had then a splendid opportunity of adopting the
Pan-European ideal and assuming the leadership of a free
Europe. But its statesmen lacked the necessary imagination.
During my last visit to London, Amery had invited two
former Foreign Secretaries to meet me: Sir Austen Chamberlsiin,
a Conservative, and Arthur Henderson, a Socialist. Amery
hoped that I might convert them to the Pan-European cause.
Dawson, then editor of The Times, was also present. Amery
and I tried to put forward every argument in favour of Britain
adopting a European policy. But Henderson and Chamberlain
were both equally determined to put forward every available
counter-argument. In the end Chamberlain summed up our
discussion by saying: ‘Though my friend Henderson and I
hold conflicting views on a great many matters, we seem to
agree fully on the fact that the unification of Europe is not in
the interests of Britain.’ Henderson endorsed this statement.
Amery and I had clearly to give in.

In view of the aggressive designs of the Nazi Government
and the rearmament programme under way in Germany,

i86

I CALL ON MUSSOLINI 187

France was more concerned than ever with the problem of her
own security. The policy of Franco-German understanding
which Briand had sponsored, and which he hoped to combine
with his wider European plans, had miscarried and could not
for the time being be revived. France’s only hope lay in either
British or Russian assistance against new German aggression.
Both these potential allies were, however, knovm to oppose
Pan-Europe. France, too, had therefore to soft-pedal for the
time being the Pan-European ideal.

Poland, caught between Hitler and Stalin, could hardly
afford to provoke its powerful neighbours by rallying ostenta¬
tiously to the cause of Pan-Europe. On the contrary. Marshal
Pilsudski felt himself compelled to conclude a temporary truce
with Hitler so as to postpone partition of his country between
Germany and Russia.

Most smaller European countries had only one aim: to
remain neutral in the forthcoming trial of strength. Even
Masaryk had, after all, refused to speak against totalitarianism
for fear of provoking Hitler’s wrath!

I had no relations at all with Italy. Mussolini was evidently
still angry with me for having invited Nitti to become honorary
president of our first Congress of Pan-Europe.

Our triumphal progress in the days of Briand was now only
a lingering memory; in March 1933 the movement lay in
utter ruins.

Yet Pan-Europe seemed to me more important than ever now
as a means of keeping the Third Reich in check and preventing
a new world war. The Paris-Rome axis appeared to be the only
point of departure for a new defensive alliance between the
free countries of Europe. Such an alliance, comprising ninety-
five million Latin peoples, would have had the automatic
support of all the Danubian countries; it would further have
been strengthened by the accession of Poland in the north and
of the Balkan countries in the south. Such a union of some
two hundred million Europeans, representing west, south
and cast, would have been in a position to deflect Hitler from
any political or economic adventures outside Germany and to

l88 AN IDEA CONQ,UERS THE WORLD

prevent German rearmament. It would thus have become
possible to await Hitler’s fall from power by means other than
war.

The difficulty was to gain Mussolini’s support for such a plan.
Though his interests in Austria risked collision with those
of Hitler, there was a close kinship between the ideologies of
the two dictators. Mussolini, too, was anxious to see Europe
divided into two rival camps, France and Germany, between
which he could act as arbiter—^taking care never to identify
himself with either. But I was at any rate prepared to make
an effort to convert Mussolini to our way of thinking. I was
reminded in this connection of the wise old maxim coined by
the great Condottiere Sforza: ‘If you are faced with three
enemies, make peace with the first; conclude an armistice
with the second, and hurl yourself with all your might against
the third! ’

Our attempts at enlisting Mussolini’s support did not appear
entirely hopeless. Since the days of Briand’s initiative, a monthly
journal had appeared in Rome, entitled Anti-Europa. Though
every issue contained some criticism of Briand and ‘Conte
Calergi’, the journal definitely gave expression to certain
Pan-European tendencies. It was in fact a rather cunning
attempt by Mussolini to win over the Italian intelligentsia
for the idea of Pan-Europe without any loss of face on his
part.

Whilst in Geneva, I asked Titulescu to introduce me to
Mussolini’s Foreign Minister, Dino Grandi. I found him very
understanding and we had a long discussion. He showed
considerable sympathy for my ideas, but refused to commit
himself in any way. In the end, he undertook to arrange a
meeting between Mussolini and myself. We awaited Mussolini’s
reply in Cap d’Antibes, near the Italian border. Meanwhile,
the Columbia Broadcasting System had invited me to give a
talk on Pan-Europe. I was to deliver this talk on gth May in
Nice, from where it would be broadcast to New York.

On 7th May a cable reached me from Rome: Mussolini
would be waiting for me on the afternoon of loth May. The

I CALL ON MUSSOLINI l8g

date of my radio talk could not be postponed. But arrangements
were made to deliver it in Ostia instead of Nice. I reached
Rome in the morning of gth May. Mr. Morgan, the repre¬
sentative of the Columbia Broadcasting System, immediately
informed me that my talk had to be cancelled on account of
a ‘technical hitch’ at Radio Ostia. Morgan was most upset.
He at once called on Mussolini in order to have the matter put
right. Mussolini was in a truculent and strictly monosyllabic
mood. Morgan and I were convinced that the hitch at Ostia
was political rather than technical: Mussolini was evidently
angry when he heard that a talk on Pan-Europe had been
arranged from his own broadcasting station without his prior
approval. All this seemed a thoroughly bad omen for my visit
to him the following day.

At the Palazzo Venezia I was escorted through iron gates
and along narrow corridors. Finally we reached Mussolini’s
ante-chamber. After a short wait, I was invited by one of
Mussolini’s secretaries to step into his study. The study could
hardly be described as a room. It was a long, lofty hall—with
a huge desk in the most remote comer. Behind this desk sat
Mussolini. While I walked diagonally across the hall, he never
looked up from his papers. He appeared to be writing something
and affected not to have noticed my entrance. Only when I
actually stood in front of his desk, he rose and offered me a
seat on my side of the desk, facing him. He seemed serious,
cool and very reserved.

I found him much changed since the time when I observed
him in the Senate. His black hair had begun to turn grey.
He had become older and stouter. But this also made him look
more massive and robust than ever. His movements were no
longer as nervous and jumpy as when he spoke and listened in
the Senate; they now seemed calm and controlled. He had
evidently become much more familiar with the part of Caesar
for which he had Ccist himself. There was not a trace now of
the temperamental journalist whom I had observed in the
Senate; instead I now sat face to face with a wealthy and
powerful business leader of unpretentious peasant origin.

igo AN IDEA CONQ,UERS THE WORLD

Whereas formerly I thought of him as resembling a leopard, he
now seemed much more like a heavy bull.

His head looked impressive, his forehead tall and handsome.
His temples betrayed intellectual leanings. Altogether the upper
half of his head was composed of noble features, while the
lower part reflected brutality. In a serious mood, he appeared
strong and handsome; as soon as he opened his mouth to smile,
he became ugly. His smile had a cynical flavour. In sitting
posture, his large head harmonized well with his heavy chest;
on his feet, he looked small and ill-proportioned.

At first there was an embarrassed silence. When I handed
him a few of my writings he immediately opened the collection
of aphorisms entitled Rules of Life and started reading the one
beginning: ‘Be sane—be strong—be beautiful—be pure!’
Mussolini read aloud in halting, but clearly intelligible,
German: ‘Be sane: yes! be strong: yes! be beautiful? no!
Why should a man have to be beautiful?’ I commented that
the term ‘beautiful’ applied not only to man’s body but also
to his soul and character. This definition appeared to satisfy
him. The ice between us had been broken.

We spoke in French. Our first topic was Nietzsche, who had
stood to Mussolini in much the same didactic relationship as
Wagner to Hitler. Mussolini’s Fascism was based on Nietzsche’s
anti-democratic philosophy, just as Hitler’s dreams were based
on the romanticism of Wagner’s operas. I remembered that
Nietzsche had been one of the early pioneers of a Pan-Europe
and handed Mussolini a copy of our journal Pan-Europe,
containing a complete collection of all Nietzsche’s sayings
about European unity.

We then came to speak of racial theories. Mussolini regarded
Hitler’s anti-Semitism as absurd. I explained to him that no
Nazi could ever look upon an Italian as an equal, since to him
all dark-haired Mediterranean peoples were of mixed race, half
Aryan, half Negro. ‘ I also have given much thought to racial
questions,’ Mussolini told me, ‘and many years ago I even
wrote an article on the subject. I will try to have this article
found and sent to you. My thesis was that most great cultural

I CALL ON MUSSOLINI igi

works were created by the Mediterranean races and that the
barbarians of the north attempted time and again to wipe us
out.’

This led us straight to political matters—and to Pan-
Europe. He inclined towards a Latin Union between Italy
and France as a kind of protective barrier against the Third
Reich; he also seemed to sympathize with the idea of Pan-
Europe. Gradually Mussolini warmed to the conversation;
his manner became increasingly friendly and natural. The
dictator had vanished; only the intellectual remained. As we
parted, he asked me to prolong my stay in Rome for a few
days, since he was anxious to continue our conversation.

A few hours later I was received in the Vatican by Cardinal
Pacelli, then Secretary of State. Idel and I had made his
acquaintance many years earlier in Berlin at a dinner given by
Dr. Becker, the Prussian Minister of Culture. At that time
Pacelli had been papal Nuncio. In 1939 he became Pope Pius
XII.

We talked of National Socialism and the danger of war.
By contrast with his predecessor, Pacelli made no secret of his
sympathy for Pan-Europe. While talking to Pacelli, I could not
help thinking of Mussolini and of the indescribable contrast
between these two great Italians. Though sons of the same
nation, they sprang from two entirely different worlds. There
was a difference between them as between heaven and earth.
Pacelli seemed an angelic being, an incarnation of the ‘ pastor
angelicus’ mentioned in prophecy. I thought of Mussolini’s
remark: why should man have to be beautiful, as I beheld this
noble priest—a perfect blend of three-dimensional beauty,
physical, moral and intellectual; a living work of art in the
tradition of the pre-Raphaelites, with the brilliant, lucid
countenance of a truly good man and a smile which lit up his
severe, ascetic features.

In my hotel I happened to run across Prince Louis Ferdinand
of Prussia, the Crown Prince’s second son, whom we had
previously met in Berlin and St. Moritz. He immediately asked
me whether I believed that Hitler would proclaim his uncle

192 AN IDEA CONQUERS THE WORLD

‘Auwi* (August-Wilhelm) Emperor, as he had promised. I
told him that I considered this quite outside the bounds of
possibility; Hitler would do anything rather than share hb
power with a Hohenzollem. I advised him to avoid all contact
with Hitler as far as possible and perhaps go to America
until the Third Reich went out of business. But the young
prince, highly gifted as he was, chose not to follow my advice.

Ten years later Dr. BrOning told me in Boston how, during
his fight against Hider, the idea had occurred to him of fore¬
stalling the Third Reich by restoring the Hohenzollems to the
throne. Prince Louis Ferdinand would have been hb choice.
His plan failed because neither the ex-Emperor nor the Crown
Prince were ready to renounce their claims in favour of Loub
Ferdinand.

Two days after my talk with Mussolini I received a short
note from one of hb chief assistants: Mussolini was heavily
engaged and could not therefore see me again. The article
which he had promised was not enclosed. I suspected that
Mussolini had meanwhile read my journal and that he had
been annoyed by my article on ‘The Rights of Man’ in which
it is said that recognition of these rights was a pre-condition for
the accession of any state to the Pan-European Union. The
article was of course directed primarily against Hitler. But
Mussolini had some grounds for feeling that it was also directed
against him—the more so as it was introduced by the famous
quotation from Holderlin: ‘The masses always like what is fit for
the market-square; slaves generally honour those who wield
power; none but the divine themselves believe in things
divine! ’

My visit was nevertheless a turning-point in Mussolini’s
attitude towards Pan-Europe. Henceforth hb opposition gradu¬
ally diminbhed.

Before leaving Rome I paid a visit to the editorial offices
of Anti-Europa and met its youthful editor-in-chief, Asvero
Gravelli. Thb protege of Mussolini’s turned out to be a staunch
supporter of Pan-Europe, who had read every line of my
writings and was in fact a secret dbciple of mine. He had made it

I CALL ON MUSSOLINI

*93

his aim to win over public opinion in Italy to my ideas and to
organize with Mussolini’s approval an Italian branch of our
Union.

I was surprised to find inscribed over his oflice-door not
the title 'Anti-Europa' but—in huge letters—the words; Roma
erat ante Europam' (Rome existed before Europe). This in¬
scription reflected Gravelli’s embarrassment about the title
of his publication; he hoped in fact, by merely changing one
letter, to convert this title surreptitiously into ‘Ante-Europa’.
But this trick was no longer needed. Acting on orders from
above, he soon suspended the journal’s publication. Some
time later, it reappeared under a new and neutral title: Ottobre.
There were no more attacks against me, and Ottobre all but
became the oflicial Italian organ of our movement. Hence¬
forward, Italy was strongly represented at all our conferences.
Gravelli himself led the Italian delegation to the fourth Congress
of Pan-Europe in Vienna.

Mussolini himself never concealed his sympathy for Pan-
Europe. In an interview with the Paris newspaper L'Intransigeant
published in January 1934, the mantle of Briand seemed almost
to have f^dlen on his shoulders. He said:

Is it logical that the destinies of the great nations of Europe depend
on the decisions of small, far distant peoples, which admittedly
deserve respect, but whose geographical location is unknown to
at least three-quarters of the people of Europe? Certainly not. The
League of Nations was an ideological creation of the democracies.
It never kept in touch with reality, and peace now rests on a flimsy,
metaphysical and impermanent basis.

Europe has created the civilization of the world. Europe has
directed this civilization and benefited from it. Today Europe is in
danger of foundering altogether between America and Japan.
If Europe wants to regain her foothold and remain in existence,
she must unite. The great nations of Europe need cement to bind
them together: they need a European spirit.

CHAPTER XX

THE DOLLFUSS TRAGEDY

Hitler’s mind was now set on the conquest of Austria. He
realized that possession of Vienna would give him the key to all
Europe. Once Austria had been annexed, Czechoslovakia—the
buffer against German aggression on which the French based
their Central European jxdicy—^would be effectively encircled
and the road to the Balkans lie open for further German con¬
quests. It was not surprising, therefore, that plans for the siege
of Vienna began to be laid early in 1933, soon after Hitler’s
accession to power. The war of nerves lasted five years and
ended with Austria’s final surrender on nth March 1938.

The outbreak of this life-and-death struggle raised a serious
dilemma for our movement. Either we continued to operate
from Vienna and fight from there for an independent Austria
within the framework of a united Europe, or we transferred
our headquarters to Switzerland and, from that safe base, ran
the movement on economic rather than political lines until
the international situation would permit us to resume our
efforts towards Franco-German understanding. Our choice
depended mainly on the attitude of the new Austrian Govern¬
ment: on whether or not this Government saw fit to harness
the driving force inherent in our movement to its own struggle
for independence. My mind in this respect was made up as
soon as I had had my first talk with Engelbert Dollfuss, the
new Chancellor of the Austrian Republic.

Dollfuss was a man of great generosity and moral courage.
Though a typical Austrian, he was by no means a typical
Viennese, The decadent cosmopolitanism and culture of the
metropolis had left no mark on him. Dollfuss remained a
genuine product of the countryside, of the gentle woodland
slopes of Lower Austria. Besides his erudition, he retained the
sound common sense of a peasant. His political success was
not due to the backing of any one party, but rather to his
194

THE DOLLFUSS TRAGEDY I95

brilliant performance as Secretary-General of the Farmers’
Unions. His association with these unions enabled him to rely
at all times on the support of the farmers.

I first met this remarkable statesman in the Federal Chancel¬
lery in Vienna. He was of slight build, and had a face of such
unusual kindness that one was instinctively drawn to him.
His high forehead was a measure alike of his intelligence and of
his obstinacy. His large sparkling eyes betrayed idealism,
whilst the movements of his well-shaped mouth radiated that
typically Austrian blend of wit, sarcasm and charm. There was
also about him an air of restlessness, as of a man who has much
to do, but little time to do it in.

Dollfuss received me as he would an old friend. I had no
need to explain to him what significance the future of our
movement had for Austria. He knew only too well that, without
Europe’s help, Austria’s struggle was hopeless. Everything
depended on his convincing the great powers that Hitler’s threat
to Vienna was also a challenge to their own security and to
their survival as free nations.

Dollfuss accepted the honorary presidency of the Austrian
branch of our movement. He also placed at our disposal one
of the most elegant offices in the world: the Federal Chancellor’s
official quarters in the Imperial Palace. In the Emperor’s days
this apartment had been reserved for visiting royalty. Dollfuss
himself, loathing fuss and ostentation, preferred his own modest
apartment to the grandiose setting of this official residence.

We soon agreed on a plan of campaign. The Austrian
Government would support the movement in every possible
way, whilst the movement itself would direct all its efforts
towards forming a united European front as a means of
guaranteeing Austrian independence.

A second point on which we soon reached agreement
concerned economic co-operation between the Danubian
countries. Through the Treaty of Rome, Dollfuss had ensured
reasonably close economic understanding between Rome,
Vienna and Budapest. He now aimed at extending this under¬
standing to the countries of the Little Entente, so as to create a

igS AN IDEA CONQ,UERS THE WORLD

really large economic area which would have prospects of
weathering the economic crisis by its joint efforts. He felt
strongly that the key to the Little Entente lay in Prague, and
he begged me to do all I could to win the support of my Czech
friends for these plans.

A further question with which Dollfuss was much concerned
was that of how the peasant populations of Central and Eastern
Europe could be actively rallied behind the Pan-European
movement. The collapse of world markets had rendered the
position of the agricultural areas almost desperate. Dollfuss
was convinced that only an inter-European preferential system
could rescue them from this plight. He therefore suggested
the creation of a Pan-European peasants’ movement, and
promised that, if I succeeded in forming such a movement,
he would help me wdth his far-reaching connections with
agricultural organizations.

We also decided that, in addition to the existing information
office run by our movement, there should be an economic
office whose task it would be to prepare the ground for a
European Customs Union by carrying out statistical and
economic studies on various subjects. On 2nd December 1933
a Pan-European Economic Office was opened at our new
headquarters. The inaugural ceremony was attended by
Dollfuss, his Ministers, and many members of the diplomatic
corps.

Though Dollfuss was in a position to guarantee the continued
existence of our central office, he had unfortunately no influence
over its radius of action. Whether or not the movement would
continue to make itself felt in European politics depended less
on Vienna than on Paris. In this respect, an improvement took
place early in 1934, when the reins at the Quai d’Orsay passed
into the hands of a man who was deeply convinced of the need
for a united Europe—Louis Barthou.

This uncommonly intelligent man, deeply cultured and
wonderfully vigorous, was the spiritual successor of Aristide
Briand. He realized that the establishment of the Third
Reich made the unification of Europe a more urgent task than

THE DOLLFUSS TRAGEDY I97

ever before: for only a powerful defensive system embracing the
whole of Europe could prevent German rearmament. He was
acutely aware of Vienna’s key position in any such system and
therefore realized the vital importance of preventing its an¬
nexation by Germany. Thanks to Barthou’s understanding and
confidence, the Pan-European movement was able to continue
to play its role on the international plane despite Germany’s
defection from the European family.

In October 1934 Barthou was assassinated at Marseilles,
together with King Alexander of Yugoslavia. His death proved
a heavy blow for Europe. Fortunately the policy which he had
initiated survived his disappearance from the political scene.
His successors were as loyal as he to the idea of European
federation; altogether, my contacts with the Quai d’Orsay
were happily unaffected by the frequent personal changes at
the head. I owed this in the first place to Alexis Legcr who, in
his capacity as Secretary-General of the Foreign Ministry, had
a decisive influence on French foreign policy and always
remained a close friend of mine.

In Prague, too, a new man had come to power whose
attitude was wholly European and with whom I was to collabor¬
ate closely—Dr. Milan Hodia. Hodia was a native of Slovakia
and a Protestant. As a young politician he had been the
personal adviser of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the Emperor’s
heir, and it seemed as if he was destined later to play a leading
role in carrying out the reforms which the Archduke then
planned. Years later he became Chairman of the Czech Agra¬
rian Party. Free from the nationalistic shackles which hampered
so many of his compatriots, Hodfa was a genuine European. His
generous manner of dealing with men and affairs had more in
it of the Hungarian gentry than of the Czech politician. He did
not get on well with BeneS, largely because he shared Dollfuss’s
ideas about the new role of the agrarian parties and the need
for united action by all Danubian countries. He would have
welcomed an understanding with Italy, but the ideological and
personal antipathy between BeneS and Mussolini proved a
quite unbridgeable gulf.

igS AN IDEA CONQ,UERS THE WORLD

Masaryk soon retired from the presidency and shortly there¬
after died. In the circumstances, I found my collaboration with
Hod 2 a more valuable than ever. For, though my personal
relations with President BeneS remained excellent, I always
had a much closer understanding with Hodfa on political
matters.

Dollfuss, Barthou and Hodia were the three contemporary
statesmen who enabled our movement to find new strength
and a new orientation after Hitler’s seizure of power in Germany.
Thanks to their efforts, the Pan-European movement survived
financially even after its German sponsors had withdrawn their
support; this defection on the part of the Germans was more
than made good by subsidies from the Austrian, French and
Czech Governments; also, while Titulescu remained Foreign
Minister, from the Rumanian Government. These subsidies had
a deep moral significance for our movement, and underlined
its political role in the struggle for the future of Europe.

Early in 1934 Dollfuss began to find himself in an increasingly
difficult position. Hitler had only just embarked on the rearma¬
ment of Germany. He could not risk invading Austria for fear
of getting embroiled in a war with the Western powers. It
therefore served his purposes much better to conquer Austria
from within by making skilful use of his fifth column. The
internal battle against Dollfuss was waged by the Austrian
National Socialists in aspirit of ruthlessness and bitter determina¬
tion. Men were assassinated, bridges blown up, propaganda
leaflets distributed throughout the country and subversive
organizations issued with arms. It was clear to all who knew
these facts that the outbreak of an open insurrection was only
a matter of time.

Those who opposed National Socialism lacked unity. In
Parliament, the fact that Christian Socialists and Social
Democrats were both bitterly opposed to National Socialism
did not prevent them from constantly fighting each other.

Outside Parliament there existed at that time in Austria three
para-military organizations capable of supporting political
parties in a civil war; Hitler had his so-called Brown Army; the

THE DOLLFUSS TRAGEDY I99

Social Democrats relied for support on their Red Army,
which was in some ways backed by BeneS; whilst the Heimwehr
Groups constituted the Green Army. The Heimwehr was under
the leadership of young Prince Starhemberg who had spent
his considerable fortune on training and equipping it.

The Heimwehr groups displayed equal hostility to Socialists
and Nazis. They had a distinctly Fascist background and drew
much support from Mussolini, who had proclaimed himself
Starhemberg’s patron. As the Christian Socialists were the
only party without a private army, Dollfuss came to terms with
Starhemberg and invited him to join the Government. But the
Social Democrats, whilst in principle not averse to joining a
coalition under Dollfuss, made it a condition of their doing so
that Starhemberg should resign. Dollfuss realized that to break
off relations with Starhemberg was to court the displeasure of
Mussolini, a step which he was in no position to risk. For, with
the exception of Germany, Italy was then the only great power
which had a common frontier with Austria, so that in the event
of a German invasion of Austria, Mussolini’s troops were the
only ones whose help could be invoked immediately against
Hitler’s armies. Faced with the choice between the Socialists
and Mussolini, Dollfuss decided in favour of Mussolini. In
order not to create a situation in which new elections might
enable the Austrian Nazi Party to have a casting vote in Parlia¬
ment and in the Government, Dollfuss ordered the suspension
of the parliamentary constitution. In its place he set up a
corporate constitution in which representation would be by
professions and no longer by political parties. In this manner,
Dollfuss became dictator of Austria, though it could hardly
be said that this role suited either his democratic inclination or
his personal modesty.

In February 1934 the Socialist Party resorted to open war¬
fare in defence of the traditional constitution. Helped by the
regular army and Starhemberg’s Heimwehr Groups, Dollfuss
succeeded in quelling this insurrection. In doing so, he also
destroyed such hopes as the Nazis had of overthrowing the
Government by civil war or new elections. The Nazis thereupon

aOd AN IDEA CON<iUEftS THE WORLD

decided that their only remaining hope lay in assassinating
Dollfuss, thus leaving the country without a leader and in a
mood of simmering insurrection which would make it an easy
prey for German annexation.

Our movement had many enthusiastic supporters both
among the Christian Socialists and among the Social Democrats.
I tried to mediate between Dollfuss and Seitz, then Socialist
mayor of Vienna. Both were hopeful of achieving a better under¬
standing between the two parties. But the Heimwehr and the
more extreme elements of the Socialist Party pressed hard for
a show-down and gradually carried the moderate elements
with them.

Meanwhile we pursued our campaign for the formation of a
united anti-Nazi front. On 17th May we held a rally in the
large Assembly Hall of the Austrian Parliament. In front hung
two huge flags—that of Austria and that of Europe. Dollfuss
and I made the chief political speeches; von Schuschnigg,
who was then Minister of Education, spoke about the cultural
unity of Europe. Ida Roland then proceeded to read the superb
speech made by Victor Hugo at the opening of the 1849
Pacifist Congress in Paris.

We spent that evening with Dollfuss and other friends
tasting the year’s vintage in an inn at Grinzing, a wine¬
growing suburb of Vierma. Dollfuss enjoyed himself like a child.
He arranged for some of the best Austrian wines to be served
to Ricard, our French delegate, who had once been Minister
of Agriculture. He liked hearing these wines praised by a
connoisseur, for their improved quality was largely due to his
own personal efforts. His secretary entertained us with a selection
of Austrian folk songs, and people were dancing everywhere.
Presently, however, Dollfuss’s private detective quietly reminded
him that we were sitting in a brilliantly illuminated veranda
separated by no more than a glass partition from the dark
vineyards all around; news had got about that the Chancellor
was spending the evening there, and it would not be safe for
him to remain longer. But Dollfuss was enjoying himself so
thoroughly that he was loath to go. We stayed until late that

THE DOLLFUSS TRAGEDY 201

evening, happy and carefree, listening to the soothing melodies
of Viennese waltzes.

A few weeks later we met Dollfuss and his wife at the home of
von Karwinsky, the Minister of Public Safety. Dollfuss told me
that in a few days’ time he and his family would be leaving for
Riccione on the Adriatic coast, where Mussolini and his family
were also spending a holiday. This would provide him with a
good opportunity of having a comprehensive exchange of views
with Mussolini on the question of Pan-Europe; he would try to
persuade Mussolini to seize the initiative in this matter. He was
full of hope and felt certain that, with the joint help of Mussolini
and Barthou, he could succeed in guaranteeing Austria’s future
through a European alliance. I entreated him not to ignore his
personal safety—for Europe’s sake as much as for that of his
family and of Austria. My wife also stressed the need for en¬
suring Dollfuss’s safety in a conversation with Alwine Dollfuss
who, together with her two children, was planning to precede
her husband to Riccione. A few days later we ourselves left
Vienna for a holiday in Switzerland.

In the early afternoon of 25th July I was interrupted in my
work by suddenly hearing a deep sigh. I was frightened; my
first thought was that something had happened to Idel. I
hurried to her room where I found her perfectly well and rather
surprised at my concern. I then went to see my brother-in-law,
Arthur; he was quietly painting one of his water-colours,
and had evidendy heard nothing. Shordy after, the vkireless
brought the dreadful news from Vieima: Chancellor Dollfuss
had been assassinated by a group of Nazis who had made their
way into the Chancellery dressed as army and police officers.
He died slowly of his wounds, without either a doctor or a
priest being present. In his last minutes, hovering between life
and death, he remembered perhaps our last conversation—
our warnings, our dreams and our hopes. And, in a most
mysterious manner, I seemed to have picked up one of his
sighs. . . .

CHAPTER XXI

THE FALL OF AUSTRIA

Dollfuss died as a hero, fighting for Europe against Hitler.
Though he was not strong physically, he had taken up the
fight fearlessly and magnanimously, fully conscious of the
personal danger which this entailed. Without his resistance,
Austria would probably have succumbed to Hitler much
earlier, and the history of the world might well have taken a
different course.

The Nazi insurrection for which the assassination of Dollfuss
was to be the signal collapsed in the face of popular indignation:
everyone sincerely mourned the death of Austria’s Chancellor.
The country’s independence might nevertheless have ended
there and then, had it not been for Mussolini’s timely despatch
of troops to the Brenner Pass. The appearance of these troops
prevented Hilter from sending aid to the hard-pressed Austrian
Nazis.

As Federal Chancellor and also as honorary president of our
Austrian Committee, Dollfuss was succeeded by Kurt von
Schuschnigg, who proved a worthy successor in every respect.

But the assault of the Third Reich against Austria continued
relentlessly and without abatement. German machinations
were now conducted by Hitler’s new Ambassador, Herr von
Papen, with whom I naturally refused to have further dealings.
We had many contacts, on the other hand, with the French
Minister, Gabriel Puaux, as well as with the Ministers of the
United Kingdom, of Italy, of the United States, of Czecho¬
slovakia and of other democratic countries.

At that time Vienna was still the cultural centre of the
German-speaking world. Many famous German artists, having
turned their backs on the Reich, decided to transfer their acti¬
vities to Vienna. Schuschnigg did everything in his power to
encourage this trend. There was nothing in the world to exceed
the artistic perfection of Viennese opera and Viennese music.

THE FALL OF AUSTRIA 20$

and the Burgtheater challenged Reinhardt’s Viennese pro¬
ductions for the most exquisite presentation of German drama.
Shortly before the Anschluss, Ida Roland achieved in the
Burgtheater two of the greatest triumphs of her life, playing
first the part of Cleopatra, then that of Lady Macbeth.

Whilst the cultural life of the city remained on such a high
level, its political life began to be distinctly disagreeable. Not a
day passed without rumours of a coup d'itat. A police-guard
was constantly posted outside our front door to protect us from
would-be assassins. When we drove to attend our Congress a
detective always sat next to our chauffeur.

We were on friendly terms with an elderly painter who was a
most eccentric person. His eccentricity accounted for his being
at one and the same time an enthusiastic follower of my philo¬
sophical ideals, an admirer of Ida Roland, and a staunch
supporter of the Nazi Party. He was kind enough to tell me
that his group had decided to kill me as soon as the Nazi in¬
surrection broke out—and he promised to warn me of this in
time.

Whenever members of the Government called on us the
police searched the building beforehand to guard against the
possibility of surprise attacks. One day a seemingly harmless
neighbour of ours died. On examining his property the police
discovered a hidden store of bombs.

Notwithstanding all the precautions taken by the police, we
were nearly blown sky-high one day. Schuschnigg was to dine
with us in the evening and, in the course of the afternoon, a girl
came into the kitchen with a parcel for Joseph, our chauffeur-
valet. Only after the ‘Anschluss’ did Joseph disclose to one of
our servants that this parcel contained a time-bomb. He was to
have planted this bomb in our drawing-room, setting the time
fuse so that it would explode shortly after dinner. Fortunately
for us, his nerves proved too weak for the task and he threw the
bomb into the nearby Danube canal. A few days later we dis¬
missed him on account of a minor theft, little suspecting that he
was a secret member of the Nazi party.

In all these years of our struggle against Germany, the central

204 AN IDEA CONQUERS THE WORLD

office of the movement was very active. In 1935 we organized
the fourth Congress of Pan-Europe. This again took place in
the Assembly Hall of the Austrian Parliament, the Federal
Chancellor presiding. It turned out to be an important inter¬
national demonstration against National Socialism. A year
later, in May 1936, we organized the first Pan-European
Farmers’ Congress. One of the most active sponsors of this
Congress was the secretary-general of the Farmers’ Unions,
Leopold Figl, who was later to become Austria’s first post-war
Chancellor. The Czech delegation was led by Dr. Ladislaus
Feicrabend, who worked closely with Hodza and was at the
time director-general of the National Wheat Monopoly.
Feierabend was later to become Finance Minister of the Czech
Government in London. In 1937 we organized the fint Euro¬
pean Educational Congress under the honorary presidency of
Dr. Pernter, the Austrian Minister of Education. The Western
countries were well represented at this Congress, and the dis¬
cussion centred on the historical, geographical and literary
aspects of European education.

This work for the maintenance of Western culture brought
us into contact with one of the finest and noblest characters I
have met in my life. Father Friedrich Muckermann.

Father Muckermann was a Jesuit. For many years he lived
in Munster, where he edited a literary magazine, Der Oral. In
appearance he was typically Westphalian: large and well-
proportioned, with a high forehead indicating a contemplative
mind. His eyes and mouth betrayed signs of deep melancholy.
His dynamic personality made him a German fighter of the
type of Martin Luther, driven by a militant instinct, yet held
in check by his severe religious discipline. Though Bolshevism
was his principal target, he was no less opposed to the Nazi
ideology. With the personal assistance of the Queen of HoUand
he was able to escape from Germany and subsequently found
asylum in Rome. But when Austria began to wage her life-and-
death struggle against the Third Reich, Muckermann zisked to
be sent to Vienna so that he could play a leading part in the
moral resistance of the Catholic Church there to the pagan and

THE FALL OF AUSTRIA 2O5

barbaric ideology of the Nazi Party. He went from church to
church preaching resistance. Wherever he went he was per¬
secuted and threatened. Many attempts were made on his life,
but fortunately none succeeded. By his outstanding eloquence
he was able to rally to his cause not only Catholics but also
Jews and Protestants. His uncompromising search for truth
occasionally proved embarrassing to the Government, but there
could be no doubt that his burning faith became one of the
Government’s most effective weapons against the Nazi threat.
In these fateful days Muckermann and I became close friends,
and I am often reminded now of our intimate collaboration in
these days as one of the few bright memories in that tragic
period.

Whilst the Austrian Government resisted German pressure
with great determination, the international situation became
more desperate every year. In May 1935 Mussolini seized the
initiative in Abyssinia. Then came the League’s sanctions,
followed by the breach between Rome and the Western powers.
This dilemma suited Hitler’s book to perfection. In March
1936 he took advantage of it by occupying the demilitarized
left bank of the Rhine. From that moment onward Austria’s
position became virtually hopeless, since even if they had
wanted to, the Western powers would have found it practically
impossible to come to her aid in the event of German invasion.

In April 1936 I asked Flandin, then French Foreign Minis¬
ter, how France would react to a German invasion of Austria.
He replied that France’s reaction would depend on the attitude
of Britain, since France could on no account risk a war against
Germany without knowing that her flank and rear were
covered by Britain. I went to London the following day—only
to discover that the British Government was not prepared to
take military steps in defence of Austria.

Meanwhile, the Abyssinian campaign was drawing to its
close. The sanctions imposed by the League had not been
sufficiently thorough to cause real embarrassment to Mussolini;
they had, however, succeeded in arousing his resentment. The
future of Austria now depended on whether a reconciliation

2o6 an idea conq^uers the world

of Mussolini with France could be achieved at the end of the
Abyssinian campaign.

To see what could be done in this respect, I again went to
Rome on gth May 1936, two days after Mussolini’s victory over
the Negus. I found the Duce in splendid form. He greeted me
very cordially. Ciano attended the meeting, and we came at
once to speak of the political situation: ‘Hitler is about to make
himself master of Europe,’ I said; ‘there is only one way of
stopping him, and that is by forging a close alliance between
Italy and France.’ Mussolini appeared to be familiar with this
train of thought. He had never really thought in terms of Pan-
Europe. His dream was of a pan-Latin federation to hold the
scales against the parts of Europe dominated by the Germans,
the Anglo-Saxons and the Slavs. The nucleus of such a federa¬
tion would consist of a close Franco-Italian alliance which
would have the further advantage of opening North Africa to
Italian colonization. The Latin federation could, of course, be
extended to include Spain and Portugal and could also have
close relations with Latin America. After we had talked for a
whole hour Mussolini walked with me across his huge study
and, as he saw me off at the door, promised to think the matter
over. Two days later we met again.

This time Mussolini opened the conversation by saying:
‘Your policy is, as it were, geometrical. It has the merit of
perfect logic, but is in my opinion quite impracticable.’ He
opened the drawer of his desk and took out a newspaper. ‘Just
read how in today’s L6on Blum regrets that the League

of Nations did not succeed in strangling me.’ He emphazised
this remark by putting his hand to his throat. ‘How can I
possibly deal on terms of confidence with such a man?’ Blum
had just then emerged victorious from the French elections and
had been charged with the task of forming a new Government.
I found it difficult to contradict Mussolini when he said that the
'Front Populaire’ Government would show little disposition to
make an alliance with him. ‘What is more,’ he observed,
‘Britain will never tolerate an alliance between France and
Italy.’

THE FALL OF AUSTRIA 207

Before we parted he said that I should certainly try to have
a word with the new leaders of France. He made it a condition of
a possible alliance that it should be confined to France and
Italy and not include Britain and Yugoslavia. Its terms of
reference should extend beyond mere political understanding:
there should be close collaboration on colonial and economic
as well as on military affairs.

I left for Paris without much hope of achieving what I really
wanted. I discussed Mussolini’s proposals with the new Vice-
Premier, Camille Chautemps and with Alexis Leger. I soon
recognized the utter futility of initiating successful negotiation
between a Fascist and a firmly anti-Fascist Government.
Mussolini was right; a Franco-Italian union was a necessity,
but the conditions for its achievement did not exist.

At the beginning of July I again called on Mussolini. He had
not altogether given up hope of collaborating with France but
had decided to postpone this project until a new Government
came into power in Paris. His hopes were evidently based on
Daladier. Mussolini was still determined to guarantee the in¬
dependence of Austria. He had not yet made up his mind
definitely to become Hitler’s partner.

Civil war broke out in Spain only a few days after my last
discussion with Mussolini. This war in Spain caused Mussolini
and Hitler to join forces and, during the protracted fighting,
the alliance between Berlin and Rome was cemented. No one
knew at the time what decision the two dictators had reached
concerning Austria. Would Hitler renounce his claims on
Austria at the request of his Axis partner—or had Mussolini
sacrificed Austria on the altar of the newly created alliance?

Early in 1938 we paid a visit to London. Now that Hitler and
Mussolini had finally joined forces, Europe’s only hope lay in
a close alliance between Paris and London. During our stay in
London we heard a piece of news on the wireless which we
found hard to believe: Schuschnigg was reported to have gone
to Berchtesgaden and to have agreed to the admission of Nazi
representatives into the Austrian Government.

On our way home we stopped for a few days in Switzerland

208 an idea conq,uers the world

and arranged for our daughter, Erica, to remain in Zurich
because of our premonition that the situation in Vienna might
deteriorate rapidly.

Returning to Vienna at the beginning of March, we found
the city completely transformed. Hitler’s threats to Schus-
chnigg had provoked a strong patriotic reaction. For a moment
it looked as if the old hatchet between Social Democrats and
Christian Socialists had been buried. The workers of Vienna
were evidently ready to fight for Austria’s independence under
the leadership of Chancellor Schuschnigg. Roused by this
patriotic fervour, Schuschnigg announced that a plebiscite
would be held on Sunday 13th March on the question of
Austrian independence. He was convinced that seventy to
eighty per cent of the population would cast their votes firmly
against annexation to the Third Reich.

As this day of much hoped-for triumph over National
Socialism approached, Vienna began to assume a festive air.
The plebiscite was regarded as an electoral battle against Hitler
and was expected to end in a clear victory for Austria.

On the morning of Friday iith March, while the streets
resounded with patriotic songs and demonstrations, Frau
Alwine Dollfuss came to sec us. An intelligent and hard-working
woman, she had been her husband’s closest collaborator and
had shared every one of his interests, particularly that in
European understanding. She had just returned from Rome,
where she made a desperate effort to save the independence of
Austria, appealing personally to Mussolini on the strength of
his friendship for her late husband. She remembered that
dreadful day in July when Mussolini, accompanied by his wife,
had come to her Riccione hotel room to bring the news of her
husband’s assassination; she also remembered that in his death
throes her husband had commended her two small children to
Mussolini’s protection.

The Duce had received her with his usual cordiality. But he
carefully avoided all political issues and confined himself to the
advice that she and her children should seek safety in Switzer¬
land.

THE FALL OP AUSTRIA 209

We were still talking to Frau Dollfuss when a new visitor was
announced; the Nazi painter. His face was deadly pale. While
he made a deep bow to the two ladies, Idcl whispered into my
ear: ‘Here is the bird of ill omen . . .' I took him next door,
where he told me that Hitler would not tolerate the plebis¬
cite and that a decision about the fate of Austria was pending
that very day.

Suddenly, in the early afternoon, an ominous silence broke
over the city. The festivities eame to an abrupt end. People
disappeared rapidly from the streets. It was uncannily like a lull
before a great storm. In the space of a few hours the mood of
the public had changed completely and rumours spread like
wildfire through the city. We spotted the first lorries with
swastika flags. Nobody knew what the next hours held in store:
was it war? or revolution? or annexation?

That evening we had guests for dinner. They had hardly
arrived when the telephone rang: Schuschnigg had resigned, a
Nazi Cabinet had been formed, the German army had begun
to occupy Austria. I rang the Czech Legation and obtained
confirmation of this news. We could not afford to waste a
minute; any moment the Gestapo might appear on our door¬
step. We asked our guests to leave at once. Then, taking Pai-
Chouan, our white pekinese, we left home and made our way
to the Czech Legation where we intended to spend the night
before crossing the frontier the next morning in the Minister’s
car. But within a few minutes we were compelled to abandon
this plan. A vast crowd, carrying swastika flags, barred our
way, screaming, cheering and singing. There was nothing for
it but to turn round. The question was where to go now? For to
return home would have been sheer suicide.

We drove to the Swiss Legation, where we knew we would
be on extra-territorial soil and could not be arrested. Dr.
Maximilian Jager, the Minister, and his wife received us in
their usual friendly way and invited us to spend the night with
them. On reflection, however, we decided to cross the frontier
that same night, since there was no knowing whether next day
might not be too late.

210 AN IDEA CONQ,UERS THE WORLD

A new difficulty arose: neither Idel nor I knew how to drive
a car, and our Austrian driver had completely disappeared.
Minister Jager placed his own driver at our disposal. Idel rang
up home: our loyal housekeeper, Berta, was to hand over our
car to the Minister’s driver, then come over to the legation
herself, having packed one trunk for the two of us; she was also
to bring Sascha, our big Russian sheep-dog. Idel then tele¬
phoned Czech friends and asked them to meet us later that
night at the frontier near Bratislava. It was about eleven o’clock
when we finally got under way.

The Ringstrasse appeared to be blocked. There was an unend¬
ing parade of Nazi sympathizers; flags were carried high through
the streets and the people cheered and sang. Luckily our car
had a Swiss number plate. Shouts of ‘ Hcil Hitler! ’ gave way
here and there to shouts of ‘Heil Schweiz!’ and, albeit with
some difficulty, we slowly made our way through the vast
crowds. Presently a new difficulty arose; we discovered that the
Minister’s driver, who was quite unprepared for this journey,
had not taken his passport. We had therefore to call at his flat
before leaving town. He drove us down a cul-de-sac, jumped
out of the car and disappeared into the dark. Presently we were
surrounded by a dozen young Nazis with swastika arm-bands,
brandishing steel bars. For a moment we feared the worst; there
was a deadly silence. Then one of the Nazis walked up to the
car and stroked the dogs. Luckily he mistook us for Swiss diplo¬
mats. The minutes which followed seemed like hours; at last
our chauffeur reappeared and we drove out to the open road.

It was past midnight and the road from Vienna to Pressburg
was practically empty. Only one solitary motor-cycle with a
vast swastika flag raced past us. We hardly spoke a word. In my
hand I held an automatic pistol, since we had to be ready for a
hold-up at almost any moment. At last we reached the frontier.
To our great surprise, the old Austrian frontier guards were
still at their posts. There was as yet no sign of the Third Reich.

During the Customs formalities we observed a large black
car standing by the side of the road. As we were about to drive
off, the chauffeur of the other car came over to say that the lady

THE FALL OF AUSTRIA 211

in his car wanted to have a word with us. It turned out to be
Alwine Dollfuss who, together with her two small children, was
waiting for an immigration permit from the Czech Govern¬
ment. Puaux, the French Minister had placed his car at her
disposal to ensure her safe passage as far as the frontier.

Half an hour later we pulled up at the only modern hotel in
Bratislava, the Carlton. All available accommodation was
occupied by refugees from Austria. As soon as we had arrived
we ran into two ex-Ministers who had evidently beaten us to it.
No one had any desire to sleep, and we remained with Frau
Dollfuss until the early hours of the morning, dkcussing the
future of Austria and of Europe.

Our next destination was Budapest. Through friends we
managed to obtain a second car for Frau Dollfuss. To ensure
that there would be no mishap, I passed word to Mussolini
through the Italian Minister that we proposed to cross Italy
on our way to Switzerland and that Frau Dollfuss and her two
children would be with us.

From Budapest we drove to Zagreb. A Hungarian police car
accompanied us all the way to the Yugoslav frontier in order to
protect us against possible attacks. In Zagreb our reception was
just as cordial as in Budapest. It warmed our hearts to feel at
that moment that so many friends and sympathizers had re¬
mained loyal to us despite the tragic events of the past few
months—and that they continued to have faith in the realiza¬
tion of Pan-Europe.

From Zagreb we drove via Ljubliana to the Italian frontier.
There, we were met by a senior Italian officer who wel¬
comed us in the name of his Government. He introduced
four young Fascists who had been specially detailed to escort
our cars through Italy as a kind of personal bodyguard. We
drove through the towns of Trieste and of Sirmione, along the
shores of Lake Garda, until we reached Chiasso. As we passed
the frontier into Switzerland and bade farewell to our black-
shirted escorts, we felt relieved at having reached at last a
country where we could dispense with the services of a personal
body-guard. On arrival in Switzerland we learned of the tragic

212 AN IDEA CONQUERS THE WORLD-

fate of many of our friends in Vienna. Our central office in
the Imperial Palace had been occupied immediately: the Nazi
Chancellor, Seyss-Inquart, had set up his personal residence
there. One of his first actions had been to destroy forty-thousand
volumes published by the Pan-Europe Editions as well as all
our archives and correspondence. Our flat had been searched
and subsequently sealed by the Gestapo.

The name of Austria disappeared from the map of Europe.
For the time being, Hitler’s position in Germany and in Europe
seemed impregnable. Pan-Europe, which had made gradual
progress towards reality for fifteen years, now relapsed once
more into the realm of dreams.

CHAPTER XXn

MEETING CHURCHILL

After our flight from Vienna and the destruction of our
central office the movement remained inactive for some months.
It did not come to life again until our closest collaborators had
succeeded in escaping from Austria.

We spent these months in Gstaad, where I tried to put down
my thoughts on the present world situation in a new book
entitled Europe Must Unite, This book called for the unifleation
of Europe around a Paris-London axis. It was the first time
Britain had been given a prominent position in the Pan-
European movement; for France was now too weak to with¬
stand the combined pressure of Berlin, Rome and Madrid. Our
only hope of salvation lay in a close working alliance between
Paris and London. Around this alliance of the two great
democratic powers there might in time grow up a combination
of all states threatened by Hitler, with the object of averting
war, or, if this proved impossible, of winning it.

At this moment, when our movement was at its lowest ebb,
one great hope emerged on the political horizon: that section of
British public opinion which was represented by Winston
Churchill. The isolationist mood represented by Neville
Chamberlain was slowly but surely petering out. A strong re¬
action was setting in against the policy of appeasement and
there grew up a kind of British resistance movement whose
political attitude towards the Third Reich did not differ
greatly from the programme of the Pan-European movement on
the Continent.

Winston Churchill was the unchallenged leader of this re¬
action which was tied to no particular party. He pressed for
rearmament, for the introduction of compulsory military
service and for a network of European alliances to counteract
the expansionist drive of the Third Reich.

I had first met Churchill in February 1938, when Austria
was in her death throes. He had invited me to spend an after-
213

214 an idea CON5iUERS THE WORLD

noon at his country home at Chartwell in Kent. I found him
very much as I had imagined him: a genial aristocrat of tre¬
mendous intellectual grasp. I was reminded of the famous
words of Nietzsche: ‘This is how I like man to be: honest
towards himself and towards his friends; courageous in the face
of the enemy; magnanimous in his treatment of the vanquished
and at all times courteous.’

Churchill is neither a typical Englishman nor a typical
product of our age. Like all outstanding personalities of
history, he cannot easily be identified with any particular age
or nation. Though he is far ahead of his countrymen in his
appreciation of the need for European understanding, he is at
the same time a leading advocate of Anglo-American co¬
operation. In a strange way, he has more in common with the
characters of the British Renaissance in the days of Shakespeare
and Queen Elizabeth than with his own contemporaries. In
talking to him one is struck by the fact that he would have been
just as dominant a personality as he is now had he been bom
two thousand years earlier as a patrician of ancient Rome.

One of Churchill’s outstanding features is his capacity for
enjoying life: there is nothing about him of the ascetic, of the
saint or of the hypocrite. Goethe, if he were alive, would have
sjiid of him that he lived ‘resolutely’. In him the stout heart of
a hero is joined to the plastic imagination of an artist.

I was gratified to feel that Churchill had remained faithful
to the ideal of Pan-Europe, though for years he had ceased to
write and speak about it. For the moment all his thoughts and
activities were concentrated on preparing his country for the
decisive battle against Hitler; for he now considered this quite
inevitable.

Towards evening I said that I ought to be getting back to
London, but Churchill asked me to stay and spend the evening
with him. He conducted me to a guest room and prepared a hot
bath for me. He suggested that, after taking my bath, I should
follow his example and rest in bed for an hour. When we sat
down to dinner an hour and a half later, Churchill looked
years younger. Before we parted he gave me a copy of his last

MEETING CHURCHILL

215

book Great Contemporaries which reveals in a wonderful way the
generosity of his character. No one could have written so
generously about his former adversary, Kaiser Wilhelm. The
last thing we then expected was that, some three weeks later,
the Gestapo would find this book—^with Churchill’s inscription
—on my desk in Vienna and confiscate it. When months later
I informed him of this, he immediately despatched a duplicate
to Gstaad.

In June the Royal Institute of International Affairs invited
me to deliver a lecture on the Sudeten crisis. Duiing our stay
in London I also worked for Czechoslovak independence in
close collaboration with Jan Masaryk, Czech Minister in
London, who was as good a European as his famous father.

Churchill’s influence had grown considerably in recent
months. The annexation of Austria and the offensive agednst
Prague had opened the eyes of many of his countrymen. Among
Churcliill’s closest collaborators in his anti-appeasement policy
was Leo Amery who used his considerable political influence in
favour of the Pan-European movement. At a luncheon given in
Amery’s house I also had another meeting with Churchill and
with Lord Lothian. During the war the latter became one of
the staunchest protagonists of the Pan-European project.

Towards the end of September the European crisis came to a
head with the Munich Conference. It seemed that the Con¬
tinent was now lying obediently at Hitler’s feet.

Five weeks later we again travelled to London—for the
third time in 1938. Churchill and his friends had made con¬
siderable headway. Their ranks had been joined by Alfred
Duff Cooper (now Lord Norwich), who had resigned from
being First Lord of the Admiralty in protest against the abject
Munich surrender. This courageous act became a signal for the
change from Chamberlain’s policies to those of Churchill.
In his book The Second World War^ Duff Cooper has this to say
about our meetings:

It was about this time that I again met Count Coudenhove-Kalergi,
whom I had seen only once personally some fifteen years before. I
' Duff Cooper, The Second World War, Jonathan Cape, London.

2i6 an idea conq,uers the world

had known then that he was working on plans for the federation of
European nations which was known as the Pan-Europe Movement,
and that he had gained the support of no less a person than Aristide
Briand, who was then at the height of his power. I had vaguely
classed this movement in my mind with the various idealistic and
impractical schemes for ensuring international peace, all of which
seemed to be now consigned to limbo as a result of the advent and
the repeated success of power politicians. Almost my first words,
therefore, at our second meetings were to suggest that I supposed
he retained little hope now of carrying out his scheme for a united
Europe. ‘On the contrary,’ he replied quietly, ‘Pan-Europe was
never so certain as it is today. Europe will certainly be united in a
near future. The only question now is whether the union is brought
about by force or whether it comes about by agreement and good
will under the moral leadership of England and France. All the
smaller nations would prefer the latter solution, which would allow
them to retain their freedom and independence, but since Munich
they have begun to doubt whether England and France have the
power or the will to protect them and therefore they are inclined
to make the best bargain they can with Germany before it is too
late.’ I was much impressed by the views he expressed, by his grasp
of the European situation and by the practical character of his
programme. . . .

We spent the winter of 1938-39 in Paris. The annexation of
Austria and the Munich Conference had focused interest afresh
upon the Pan-Europcan project. Though technically the
headquarters of our movement had been transferred to
Berne, its political centre of gravity now lay definitely in
Paris.

Ernest Mercier, an outstanding French industrialist, had
stepped into Loucheur’s shoes. With him, Louis Marlio was the
chief supporter of our French Economic Committee. Among
the members of that committee were also two future Ministers:
Rene Mayer and Raoul Dautry. After a short interval, our
journal Pan-Europe made its reappearance; it was now called
European Letters and was published in German, French and
English.

In March 1939 we paid a visit to Holland. During my talk
with him, Prime Minister Colijn received news over the tele¬
phone that the Slovaks had broken away from Prague and a

MEETING CHURCHILL 217

new German-Czech crisis was in the offing. We immediately
left for Paris so as not to be cut off from home by a sudden
invasion.

Hitler’s occupation of Prague signified the complete collapse
of the policies of Munich. Hitler had broken the pact of Munich
before the eyes of the world; Churchill was triumphant in
England; Chamberlain’s Government was compelled to carry
out a programme of rearmament and military alliances. Before
the end of March the new triangular pact had come into exis¬
tence: the alliance of London, Paris and Warsaw, which was to
constitute the framework of the new Pan-European policy of
the Western powers.

In Paris the resistance against Hitler was built up around two
men; Paul Reynaud and Georges Mandel. My relations with
both these men were excellent and they fully shared my views
on Pan-Europe. So did Gaston Palewski, Paul Reynaud’s chief
assistant, who was later to play a leading role as principal adviser
to General de Gaulle.

Through the annexation of Czechoslovakia, my wife and I
became virtually stateless. Belgium and Holland insisted on
German visas for holders of Czech passports. We therefore
applied for French nationality. Among the members of the
French Government who assisted us in this respect were Prime
Minister Daladier, Foreign Minister Reynaud and Minister of
the Interior Mandel. The normal naturalization procedure was
accelerated on account of ‘ extraordinary services rendered to
France’ and we received the necessary papers within a few
months.

The 17th May 1939 was an anniversary for Pan-Europe: nine
years ago to the day our Congress had been formally opened
in Berlin and Briand’s memorandum broadcast to the world.
To commemorate these events we organized a big meeting in
Paris. It was to be held in the Theatre Marigny on the Champs-
filysces.

Ernest Mercier was in the chair. He spoke about the prob¬
lems of economic co-operation in Europe. The next speaker
was Duff Cooper, who confined himself mainly to the political

2 i8 an idea conquers the world

situation. In a brilliant speech, he gave the reasons why Europe
must unite around a closely knit Anglo-French alliance.^

Cabinet Ministers, Ambassadors and all that sector of Paris
society which had even the mildest political pretensions filled
the large auditorium to the last available seat. My own turn to
speak came last—after Duff Cooper. I only touched briefly on
political matters, then concentrated on the moral aspect of the
problem. I took the view that Europe could never hope to
overcome its political or economic crises until there was a com¬
plete moral regeneration.

This Pan-European meeting was a resounding success both
with the audience which attended and with the wider public
reached by the Paris newspapers. The ‘Anschluss’, which at
first threatened to destroy our movement altogether, proved in
fact to have been the signal for a new advance. It seemed as
if Hitler’s threats had been more effective in forging European
solidarity than all Briand’s appeals.

At the beginning of June 1939 we were back in London.
The Royal Institute of International Affairs had invited me to
deliver another lecture—^this time about Pan-Europe—under
Duff Cooper’s chairmanship. We had an opportunity of seeing
for ourselves the extent to which public opinion in Britain had
swung round in recent months. Only one more step was needed
from this negative programme of resistance to a more positive
programme of Pan-Europe. Everyone in Britain seemed ready
to take this step under Churchill’s leadership. For only a few
days earlier Churchill had published an article in the News of
the World which argued the case for Pan-Europe in stiong terms.
During my visit I called on him at his London home—our last
meeting before the war.

We attended a very interesting luncheon given by Alfred
Duff Cooper and his wife, who—as Lady Diana Manners—
had achieved fame on the stage ever since she played the
Madonna in Max Reinhardt’s production of the Miracle by Voll-
moeller. At this luncheon we met Anthony Eden and Sir Archi¬
bald Sinclair, leader of the Liberal Party, with their wives. We
* DufT Cooper, The Second World War.

MEETING CHURCHILL 2ig

had an extensive discussion about the programme of our
movement and found that we agreed on all points.

On and June the British Pan-European Committee had its
inaugural meeting in a room at the House of Commons, Amery
was in the chair and proposed Duff Cooper as our first active
chairman. Victor Cazalet, a twentieth-century idealist who,
had he lived in the Middle Ages, would doubtless have been
a crusader, took charge of the secrctaiiat. During the war
he was appointed liaison officer to Sikorski, Prime Minister
of the Polish Government in exile; together with Sikorski,
he met his death in a flying accident near Gibraltar.

A number of other M.P.s of all three parties took part in this
inaugural meeting, among them Sir Edward Grigg, Sir Arthur
Salter, formerly head of the economic department of the
League, Harold Nicholson, the famous writer, Somerset dc
Chair, who during the war was to make a stirring speech in the
House for Pan-Europe, Haden Guest and Sir Geoffrey Mander.
This parliamentary Pan-European committee decided to hold a
mziss rally in the Albert Hall that autumn. They asked me to
be the principal speaker at the rally.

A few days later the Committee was given national status by
the inclusion of several eminent non-parliamentary figures,
such as Professor Gilbert Murray, Stephen King-Hall and Sir
Walter Layton.

Our campaign in Britain was facilitated considerably by
the appearance of my two latest books. One was entitled The
Totalitarian State Against Man^ the other Europe must Unite. Both
had been admirably translated by Sir Andrew McFadyean.
The preface for the book on totalitarianism had been ^vritten
by Wickham Steed, that for the book on Pan-Europe by Amery.
Both were well received by the press and by public opinion.

CHAPTER XXIII

WAR AND FLIGHT

At the end of August we visited the Lucerne music festival
under the direction of Arturo Toscanini. Not even the magic
of these outstanding concerts was able to dispel the depression
into which we had all sunk as a result of the mounting danger of
war. Ribbentrop and Molotov had just reached agreement on
co-operation between Berlin and Moscow. The crossing of the
Polish frontier by German troops was awaited hourly. Our
thoughts wandered back to the Bayreuth Festival of 1914—the
year when Europe was first precipitated into world war. We
seemed to have arrived at a similar turning-point—at the end
of twenty-five years of war, war’s aftermath, economic crisis and
threats of new war.

On our way back to Gstaad we stopped at Berne to collect
our new passports from the French Embassy. Two days later
Europe was again plunged into war. As soon as the first
mobilization was over we travelled to Paris, where we spent the
first winter of the war.

The partition of Poland between Hitler and Stalin and the
subsequent Russian attack on Finland helped to destroy such
good will as Russia still possessed in the West. In the last few
years sympathy for Russia’s point of view had constantly mili¬
tated against the success of our movement. Now the ideological
alignment had at last become crystal clear: on one side the
dictators, red as well as brown; on the other, the twin demo¬
cracies of the West.

This development was bound to result, as indeed it did,
in the collapse of the League of Nations. This event had a pro¬
found influence on the war aims of the Allies. For Russia’s
attitude, coupled with the growing isolationist mood in
the United States, made a revival of the League unthinkable.
On the other hand, there was an obligation on the part of
the Western allies to proclaim a positive post-war programme.

WAR AND FLIGHT

221

to which they would adhere after Hitler’s defeat. This pro¬
gramme could only be Pan-Europe.

A few days after the outbreak of war I published the following
declaration on Pan-European peace-aims:

Appeal To All Europeans!

The unspeakable sacrifices of this cmel war demand the establish¬
ment of a lasting peace which shall render new wars amongst
Europeans impossible.

After the collapse of the world-wide League of Nations, of un¬
restrained nationalism and of Bokhevist internationalism, there
remains but a single solution to ensure a long period of peace,
prosperity and liberty: the United States of Europe.

Thk federation must be organized to secure the following funda¬
mental objects:

1. European solidarity in foreign, military, economic and cur¬
rency policies.

2. An effective guarantee to all the federated states of their inde¬
pendence, integrity, security and equality, and of the main¬
tenance of their national character.

3. An obligation on all European states, regardless of differences
in their constitutions, to respect the rights of human person¬
ality and the equality of their citizens belonging to ethnic or
religious minorities.

4. The peaceful settlement of all disputes between European
states by a Court of Justice having at its disposal the material
and moral means necessary to make it decisions respected.

5. The establishment of a European institution designed to help
state members of the federation to meet their monetary and
financial difficulties.

6. The progressive suppression of inter-European economic re¬
strictions, which are wrecking and ruining the European
market.

7. A constructive plan for the necessary transition from war pro¬
duction to peace production, designed to avoid the risk of
unemployment.

8. The systematic organization of collaboration in colonial matters
with a view to fitting colonial raw-materials and markets into
the economic complex of Europe.

9. The maintenance of and respect for the political, economic
and cultural links uniting various states of Europe with other
parts of the world.

222

AN IDEA CONQ,UERS THE WORLD

lo. The promotion of international peace by collaboration with
the British Dominions, the American Continent, the Soviet
Union and the nations of Asia and Africa in a world-wide
organization.

In this tragic and decisive moment of human history we appeal
to all of you:

Struggle for a European Federation!

Europeans, save Europe!

In France Premier Daladier and Foreign Minister Reynaud
were the two national spokesmen for a post-war United Europe.
An unofHcial poll I organized among parliamentarians pro¬
duced a majority for European federation in the Senate, and a
strong minority in the Chamber.

In Britain all three parties keenly supported the idea of Pan-
Europe and many public meetings were held on its behalf.
Among the statesmen who openly sided with it were not only
Churchill and Chamberlain, but also Clement Attlee, leader of
the Labour opposition, who coined the phrase: ‘Europe must
unite or perish.’

Books, pamphlets and articles dealing with the forthcoming
United States of Europe soon appeared on both sides of the
Channel, among them the French translations of my two latest
books.

In Paris we were also in touch with leaders of the Austrian
emigre movement. In co-operation with them we tried to form
a government in exile which would enable Austria to claim a
place at the side of the victors at the eventual peace conference.
Unfortunately party differences proved too great.

These negotiations also brought us in touch with Archduke
Otto, Emperor Charles’s eldest son, an uncommonly gifted
young man, thoroughly European, highly cultured and of
great penonal charm. Had his Empire not collapsed in the
days of his childhood he might well have become one of the
outstanding rulers of his dynasty. In later years we often met
in Washington and Paris and we always enjoyed talking with
him about the international situation.

Father Muckermann also lived in Paris in those days. He

R AND FLIGHT

223

often broadcast to Germany. But, under German pressure, his
superiors soon ordered him to suspend these broadcasts. Mucker-
mann, however, found a way round this dilemma: he suspended
his broadcasts, but henceforth recorded his talks on gramo¬
phone records—leaving it to the French Ministry of Informa¬
tion to do what they liked with them!

In Paris I waited daily for my call-up papers, I had already
been approved for service with the French army and had passed
my medical examination. When the turn came for my age-
group, I was to join a regiment of heavy artillery.

On 9th May 1940 we travelled to Geneva to help set up the
new central office of our movement in the Palais Wilson. Next
morning we received news of the German assault on the
Netherlands, Belgium and Luxemburg. That same day
Churchill became Prime Minister of Britain. Both Duff Cooper
and Amery joined his Cabinet. A few days later the famous
Maginot Line was pierced. On Pan-Europc-Day, 17th May,
I went back to Paris. Having obtained the consent of the
Quai d’Orsay, I wrote a last appeal to Mussolini, asking
him in this fateful hour to co-operate in saving our cultural
heritage rather than to destroy the Latin world in alliance with
Hitler’s Germany. On 28th May, the day on which the Belgian
armies surrendered, I returned to Geneva.

A German attack on Switzerland was awaited hourly.
Everything depended on whether the so-called Weygand Line
could be consolidated on the River Somme. If that proved
possible. Hitler was expected to make his next push through
western Switzerland in the direction of Lyon so as to roll up
the flank of the French armies defending Paris.

We spent these exciting days of June 1940 shuttling back and
forth between Gstaad, Geneva and Berne. We had made no
plans to leave Switzerland, since we believed firmly in an
eventual Allied victory.

Between the glorious evacuation of Dunkirk and Hitler’s
subsequent entry into Paris, I composed my last European
Letter addressed to the members of our movement. It was dated
15th June:

224 an idea conq,uers the world

The battle of Flanders was the first round in the decisive battle for
the West. It has produced a victory for German arms: the occupa¬
tion of the Flanders coast.

The second round has now been rung in: it is the battle for Paris.

But the fate of Europe will be decided only by the outcome of the
last round—wherever that may be fought. What matters is not so
much the number of victories won nor the extent of territory
occupied nor even the number of prisoners taken, but the course of
the final battle, the battle which will end in the ultimate collapse
and capitulation of the enemy.

Those of us who lived through the First World War know from
their own experience how fortunes change in war and how great is
the difference between a victorious battle and a victorious war. We
remember the German conquests of Liege and Brussek, of Lille and
Antwerp, of Belgrad and Nish, of Warsaw and Buchaiest, of Riga
and Kiev. We remember too the arrival of German troops in
Belgium and Northern France, in Serbia and Roumania, in Monte¬
negro and Albania, in Western Russia and Northern Italy. We
remember how the Turks and the Bulgars joined the German cause,
how the Czarist Empire and armies collapsed, how peace was
negotiated at Brest-Litovsk and how German armies occupied the
fertile plains of Roumania and the Ukraine. But we remember at
the same time how this seemingly unending chain of triumphs ended:
in the unprecedented collapse of the Central Powers—only a few
months after their final offensive in France.

These events of the First World War recall the history of Napoleon,
that chronicle of fifteen years of victory from Egypt to Spain and
from Italy to Russia, that unrivalled triumphal march across
Europe which reached its climax—and its bitter end—at Moscow.
We are reminded of Goethe’s words, written as the guns thundered
away at the Battle of Leipzig: ‘Every man, whoever he may be,
must in the end encounter his last stroke of fortune and his last day
on earth.’

The fate of Napoleon’s campaign against the British resembles in
many respects that of Hannibal’s against the Romans. Hannibal’s
war, too, opened with victories and triumphs for Carthaginian arms.
But Hannibal’s victory at Cannae was no more than a stage on the
road to his ultimate defeat at Zama, which sounded the death-knell
of Carthaginian supremacy.

In history the road to victory is often paved with defeats—and
the way to final disaster occasionally leads over temporary laurels.
Campaigns such as the Franco-German war of 1870 or the Russo-
Japanese war of 1904-5—^which led to victory over an unbroken
chain of triumphs—are rare exceptions in history.

WAR AND FLIGHT

225

What distinguishes the present war from most previous wars is
that today we are witnessing not so much a battle between equally
matched great powers as one where two continental states are
aligned against two vast empires which, though they have their
nerve-centres in Europe, are in most respects immune from Europ¬
ean aggression. In his great speech in the House of Commons,
Churchill laid special stress on this point by saying that, even if the
British Isles were to be occupied and starved, that would prove not
to be decisive in the end, since the Empire would continue the war
to the bitter end from its unassailable bases overseas. France’s
position is in many respects similar to that of Britain. Germany, on
the other hand, has no empire beyond the frontiers of her European
state, whilst in the case of Italy, such colonies as she possesses in
Africa are a burden rather than a source of strength to the mother¬
land. This means that Germany and Italy fight with their backs to
the wall, whilst the Western Allies can fall back on the inexhaustible
and strategically safe resources of their overseas possessions. Together
with American help, these should enable them to continue the war
indefinitely through many changes of fortunes—provided only that
there is no break in morale; in other words, while they hold un¬
flinchingly to their resolve never to rebel, the Western Allies are
practically invincible.

This war will therefore be decided not only by arms, but also by
the state of civilian morale. If both sides display over a period of
time the same degree of resolution, then the outcome of the war can¬
not be in doubt.

There seemed to be no end to the chain of bad news: pene¬
tration of the Weygand Line—flight of the Government from
Paris—declaration of war by Mussolini—fall of Paris—
Reynaud’s last appeal to Roosevelt.

While these evil tidings poured in on all sides, there came also
one piece of heartening news: just before the final collapse of
the French armies, Churchill decided to make a generous Pan-
European gesture on behalf of his Government.

It is not without interest in these days to reread the almost
forgotten text of the proposal which the British War Cabinet
then made to their French friends:

The Declaration of Franco-British Union

At this most fateful moment in the history of the modern world, the
Governments of the United Kingdom and the French Republic

226 AN IDEA CONQ,UERS THE WORLD

make this declaration of indissoluble union and unyielding resolu¬
tion in their common defence of justice and freedom, against sub¬
jection to a system which reduces mankind to a life of robots and
slaves.

The two Governments declare that France and Great Britain
shall no longer be two nations but one Franco-British Union.

The constitution of the Union will provide for joint organs of
defence, foreign, hnancial and economic policies.

Every citizen of France will enjoy immediately citizenship of
Great Britain, every British subject will become a citizen of France.

Both countries will share responsibility for the repair of the devas¬
tation of war, wherever it occurs in their territories, and the re¬
sources of both shall be equally, and Jis one, applied to that purpose.

During the war there shall be a single War Cabinet, and all the
forces of Britain and France, whether on land, sea, or in the air, will
be placed under its direction. It will govern from wherever it best
can. The two Parliaments will be formally associated.

The nations of the British Empire are already forming new armies.
France will keep her available forces in the field, on the sea, and in
the air. The Union appeals to the United States to fortify the
economic resources of the Allies and to bring her powerful material
aid to the common cause.

The Union will concentrate its whole energy against the power
of the enemy no matter where the battle may be.

And thus we shall conquer.^

Premier Rcynaud and a number of his Ministers, among
them de Gaulle, Mandcl, Yvon Dcibos and Raoul Dautry,
were in favour of accepting this offer. They were defeated,
however, by a small Cabinet majority, led by P^tain and Ghau-
temps. Had they succeeded, i6th June would have become the
anniversary of United Europe. For the exiled Governments of
Poland, Czechoslovakia, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxem¬
bourg and Norway would certainly have acceded to an Anglo-
French Union. A single European Nation would have emerged
at the end of the war, with one Cabinet, one army, one economy
and one Parliament. The neutral and defeated nations would
subsequently have joined this Union and the result of the Second
World War would have been a Europe united in the political
as well as in the economic field.

The Times, i8 June 1940.

WAR AND FLIGHT 227

Thus it came about that in June 1940 the second wave of the
Pan-European movement reached both its climax and its end.
Once the British offer had been turned down by the French
Cabinet, Paul Reynaud’s Government was doomed and the
way was open for the armistice negotiations subsequently con¬
ducted by his successor, Petain. On 17th June Hitler’s motorized
columns reached a point just across the frontier from Vallorbe
—twenty miles north of Geneva. Italy had entered the war.
We expected the Germans to march south into Savoy and cut
off Switzerland from contact with the West.

We could, of course, have stayed in Gstaad until the war was
over. True, Switzerland was surrounded. But in a way the
country was less directly threatened than before, since Hitler’s
advance round Swiss territory meant that the country had lost
its importance to him as a transit route. But to remain in
Switzerland would have meant the end of my political activities.
Even in the first winter of the war, I had to submit my European
Letters to Swiss military censorship. Now Switzerland was
economically at the mercy of Hitler’s Germany; she could
hardly afford the luxury of harbouring a political movement
led by a foreigner of French nationality and directed against
the TTiird Reich.

In the morning of 17th June we received our visas to enter
Spain and Portugal. That same afternoon an official of the
League provided us with the necessary petrol for the journey.
On arrival in Lisbon, we intended to take a plane for London
and there to work with Churchill and the exiled Governments
on post-war plans for a United Europe.

At four o’clock in the afternoon a special newspaper edition
was sold in the streets announcing the French request for an
armistice. Not a minute was to be lost. The French authorities
might at any moment prohibit the departure of men of military
age.

We quickly took leave of our friends and of Switzerland—
and motored towards an unknown future. We had no idea
whether it would be possible to travel across France at all. Nor
did we know what Franco would do next: for all we knew.

228 AN IDEA CONQ,UERS THE WORLD

he might follow Mussolini’s example and declare war at once.
We were also ignorant of the actual position of Hitler’s
armoured columns. We guessed that they would soon be push¬
ing south into the neighbourhood of Geneva. To avoid them
we stayed away from the main Lyon road, and drove instead
over the mountain-route to Annecy and, from there, to
Valence,

Erica was at the wheel; next to her sat a French driver
whom we had hired specially for the occasion. During the first
hours we were constantly afraid lest we might meet a German
armoured column on the road. From Valence onwards there
was less to fear. We drove down the Rhone valley as fast as our
car would take us. The road was choc-a-bloc with other cars
containing refugees from Northern France and Belgium who,
like us, fled southward with as much luggage as they could
carry. At two o’clock in the morning we reached Nimes. We
looked for a room where we could spend the night, but found
that all available accommodation had already been taken up by
other refugees. We drove on to Montpellier. Here, too, every¬
thing was full to overflowing. It was now three o’clock in the
morning and we decided to spend the rest of the night on park
benches. In the morning we continued our westward trek,
flanking the Mediterranean shore. At four in the afternoon we
reached the Spanish frontier at Port Bou. We sent our French
driver home and left Erica to drive us across the Pyrenees in
the dark, until finally we reached Figueras.

Next afternoon we were in Barcelona. Exhausted by the
excitement of our escape, we had in mind sending our car to
Lisbon by rail. We ourselves would then travel by air—so as
to reach neutral territory as quickly as possible.

Friends in Barcelona advised us to discuss the problem of
despatching our car with the owner of the largest forwarding
house in Barcelona, Gabriel Ayxela Vidal—a native of Cata¬
lonia. We had hardly entered his office when this complete
stranger greeted us with a degree of friendliness that we found
quite embarrassing. He offered to look after everything: our
car, our accommodation and our onward journey. He invited us

WAR AND FLIGHT 220

to spend the evening with him in one of the most attractive
open-air restaurants of Barcelona. The unexpected hospitality
and genial friendliness of this man—-just as we had been com¬
pelled to leave our home and at a time when we saw the whole
world disintegrating around us—was an experience we shall
not be likely to forget.

Archangel Gabriel, as we called him, reserved seats for us on
the following day’s flight to Lisbon and came to the airport
himself to see us off. We were hardly airborne when I noticed,
to my horror, that the aircraft in which we travelled was not
Spanish, but Italian, and that its route was: Rome—Barcelona
—Madrid—Lisbon. It occurred to me that we might have been
delivered into the enemy’s hands. For a whole week now France
had been at war with Italy. No armistice had yet been con¬
cluded. I was a Frenchman of military age and all three of us
had diplomatic visas.

I noticed that, instead of flying inland in the direction of
Madrid, our plane followed the line of the coast southward. I
was convinced that wc were bound for Rome and visualized
being handed over by Mussolini to Hitler. ...

Presently there was a jerk. The plane landed near a coastal
town. I thought it was Valencia. But, to my surprise, it turned
out to be Barcelona—which we had left only half an hour ago.
A few yards away, on the tarmac, were two giant German air¬
craft, each with a swastika sign. I gathered that they were both
due to take off any moment for Stuttgart.

We were told that our own plane had returned because of
bad weather over Madrid. We were to wait at the airport until
the plane was ready to leave again. We immediately telephoned
our friend, the Archangel. A few minutes later he appeared in
person at the airport, demanded our luggage and our passports
from the airline officials and drove us back into town.

Why our plane returned to Barcelona has remained a
mystery to this day. One thing was certain: there was no sign
of bad weather over Madrid. Maybe it was just that the captain
wanted to have direct instructions from the Consul-General
before taking the responsibility of helping a Frenchman escape

230 AN IDEA CON<iUERS THE WORLD

to Portugal and from there perhaps to de Gaulle’s movement
in London.

Gabriel obtained sleeper reservations for the Madrid train
that evening. From Madrid we took the train to Lisbon. Before
we arnved there, news reached us that the armistice had been
signed. Hitler had won the first round in this new world war.

In those days Lisbon was a funnel, a kind of collecting-centre
for refugees from every corner of Europe. Everyone lived in
terror lest one fine day Hitler’s paratroopers would drop in
from the skies and force Portugal into an alliance with the
Third Reich. All who passed through, millionaires and beggars,
politicians, writers and businessmen had but one thought: to
proceed to America as quickly as possible.

Immediately after our arrival we enjoyed the hospitality of
Sir Walford Selby, the British Ambassador, and of Lady Selby.
Sir Walford’s previous post had been in Vienna. He urged us not
to go to London but to proceed directly to the United States,
where we could make a far more valuable contribution to the
common cause.

At first theie seemed no prospect of obtaining visas or tickets
to the United States. The demand was immense and the Con¬
sulate-General had strict instructions to keep the stream of
refugees within reasonable limits. Accommodation on American
ships was reserved for American citizens whom it was hoped to
protect from submarine attacks. The air service was booked up
for months ahead. I sent a telegram to Nicholas Murray Butler,
President of Columbia University. A few days later the Con¬
sulate-General received instructions from the State Department,
signed by Secretary Cordell Hull personally, to issue our visas
immediately. A second telegram to Butler about reservation of
berths produced the same effect. Three places were assigned to
us on the Yankee Clipper leaving Lisbon on 3rd August.

We spent the greater part of these seemingly unending six
weeks not in Lisbon, but in Cintra, a garden-city of legendary
beauty, about half an hour’s drive north of Lisbon. The city is
of Moorish appearance and contains magnificent castles and
parks. Lord Byron aptly calls it an earthly paradise.

WAR AND FLIGHT

231

Early in the morning of 3rd August we boarded the Yankee
Clipper. The day was bright and sunny. Slowly we saw Lisbon
vanish on the horizon; then the entire coastline, crowned by the
Cintra hills—our last asylum in Europe—dbappcared from
view like Paradise Lost.

In the afternoon we touched down for a short rest in Horta
on the lovely Azores islands. There, on the green peaks of the
former continent of Atlantis, we had an opportunity of bidding a
final farewell to the Europe we were leaving.

Presendy we were on our way westward, towards the setting
sun. The flight across the Atlantic was indescribably fascina¬
ting. The cloud panorama changed constantly, displaying
every variety of colour: dark grey, gold, bright red and pure
white; first low over the water like a thin veil, then higher up
on the horizon like snow-covered peaks; finally,like a vast flock
of small sheep grazing on celestial pastures of deepest blue.

This summer’s day, which we spent flying to America, turned
out to be the longest day of our lives. We flew in the same direc¬
tion as the sun and thereby gained three full hours of daylight.
After a golden sunset, the night was clear and the stars seemed
nearer and brighter than ever.

During this flight from Rider’s Europe to the New World,
my thoughts dwelt on our past experiences, and it seemed to
me as if those eventful years which we spent fighdng for peace
were like a chapter that had now been temporarily closed by
the greatest war in history. It seemed like a fairy-tale that at
the very moment when, threatened by those same armies
which had already sent us packing twice, we had reached the
extreme tip of Europe, a huge bird came across the ocean to
carry us away into a free and peaceful land.

Behind us lay a Europe that was defeated, enslaved and
morally bankrupt. Yet deep down in my soul there was a firm
conviction that one day I would sec that continent again. This
conviction proved stronger than all the arguments of logic, and
I knew that one day Churchill would wrest victory from Rider’s
hands; that the day would dawn when Europe, rescued from war
and slavery, would rise again, free—and united.

232 AN IDEA CONQ,UERS THE WORLD

During these hours, as we hovered between heaven and
earth, between Europe and America, I thanked God with all
my heart for the battle which He had allowed me to wage and
for the manner of our escape. I also thanked Him for the fact
that in all these years I never felt lonely, thanks to the company
of a wife who shared every hope and every disappointment,
every care and every plan, every thought and every action.
Through the darkest hours of this struggle, her stout heart, her
lucid brain, her self-sacrificing character, her courage and her
faith never ceased to inspire me with fresh hope and confidence.

After a peaceful night, I woke to see the sun rise above the
sea. Before us now lay the great empire of the West, whose in¬
fluence was to prove decisive both during and after the present
war. It would largely depend on the attitude taken by America
whether Europe emerged from that war as a united or a divided
continent. The fate of the Old World would be decided largely
in the New.

It was therefore of the utmost importance to win over
American public opinion to the idea of Pan-Europe. Not only
public opinion, but also Congress and the administration.
From now on, all my thoughts were trained on this single aim.
Our flight across the ocean was to be not an end, but a new
beginning.

Presently we sighted land: America. Soon we were over the
extensive beaches of Long Island. Below us we spotted houses,
boats and human beings, all seemingly minute—as if they
had stepped straight out of a toy box. A few minutes later we
touched down at La Guardia Field—twenty-six hours after
leaving Lisbon.

The Atlantic ocean, which we had crossed in a day and a
night, seemed to me like a wide river. Far from dividing the
two great branches of our common civilization, it seemed to
hold them together tightly as if it were a kind of modern
Mediterranean. It was, in fact, the cradle of that Atlantic
Union which had been bom alongside Pan-America and
Pan-Europe to mark the arrival of a new and better age.

CHAPTER XXrv

NEW YORK AND ITS WOODS

Shortly after our arrival in New York the Luftwaffe launched
its first terror raids on London. The gigantic battle which
ensued between Goering’s seemingly superior bombers and
Churchill’s valiant little force of fighter planes held all America
in its spell and every move was followed with bated breath. It
was clear enough on which side American sympathies lay, but
only a select few had the faith to believe that Britain would
succeed in snatching victory from the jaws of defeat. Nor was
it easy to see how such a feat could be achieved: invasion re¬
mained a constant threat and, in the longer run, there was the
no less pleasant prospect of starvation by U-boat warfare.

Could Britain one day reconquer the European continent?
Frankly, the idea seemed fanciful to most American observers.
Hitler was the undisputed master of the Continent and, tem¬
porarily at least, he had managed to make his peace with Stalin.
It would take the full mobilization of America’s mighty war
potential to dislodge him from this position and that mobiliza¬
tion had barely begun. America at the time was neither able
nor willing to fight a war; who then was likely to push the
German armies back out of France?

Small wonder that many Americans found it hard to make
a distinction between the theoretical notion of a United Europe
and the practical reality of a Europe forcibly held together by
Hitler’s armies. United Europe without Hitler seemed entirely
outside the realm of practical politics.

One fear which haunted me a great deal in those days was
that Schacht might persuade Hitler to adopt the Pan-European
idea for his own evil purposes. It would not have proved diffi¬
cult for Hitler in concert with Mussolini, Petain and Franco to
form a kind of High Council of Europe. This Council might
have taken immediate and spectacular measures to integrate
the European continent, rebuild its economic structure, remove

234 an idea CONiiUERS THE WORLD

customs barriers and bring about attractive social reforms. By
adopting a peaceful attitude towards Russia and America the
Council could, in time, have forced Britain to conclude a
separate peace and to recognize Hitler’s mastery of Europe.

I remember how one day, soon after our arrival, the New
York radio featured the following dialogue in its popular
programme ‘Information, Please’:

Question-master; ‘Who started the movement for a United States
of Europe?’

Voice from the

public: ‘ Brland.’

Question-master: ‘No, it was Count Coudenhove-Kalergi.’

Voice from the

public: ‘ Is he still alive?’

Question-master; ‘The way things look in Europe nowadays, it
would not surprise me in the least if he were
dead.’

The following day I made it my business to establish the
identity of the question-master. He turned out to be Otto
Tolischus, the well-known editor of the New York Times. Some
days later we met. Soon after, Tolischus became one of the
keenest American supporters of the Pan-European movement.

We were lucky to find a house in one of the most attractive
parts of New York, at thc'point where the Haarlem river flows
into the Hudson. The house was situated on the banks of the
Hudson itself, facing the steep slopes of the Palisades on which
lay one of the national parks, where all building is prohibited
by law. Downstream we could see as far as George Washington
Bridge, one of the longest bridges in the world and one of New
York’s most pleasing architectural features. Notwithstanding
its size, the structure of the bridge is so beautifully proportioned
that from a distance it resembles a fine filigree ornament. Up¬
stream our view stretched well beyond Jonkers, right up into
the wooded hillsides of Westchester County.

Our house stood in an old residential quarter, amidst ancient
oak and tulip trees; yet, for all its rustic appearance, it was a
mere half hour’s journey from the centre of Manhattan. We

NEW YORK AND ITS WOODS 235

felt that we were living in the country and, in many odd ways,
our house on the Hudson reminded us of our pre-war visits to
the North Italian lakes.

It was a strange thought that we should have found this oasis
of peace on the very edge of the world’s largest city—with
twice as many inhabitants as the whole of Switzerland. In our
new home we settled down to a very quiet and secluded life.

Idel soon received many attractive stage offers from New
York theatrical agents. But, though her English was fluent, she
was reluctant to express her art through a medium with which
she was not fully familiar. Her almost fanatical perfectionism
caused her to turn down every one of the many offers received.
There were film offers from Hollywood, too. Here Idel’s
decision was made easier by the knowledge that if we were to
settle in California I could hardly continue my political activi¬
ties which required me to spend most of my time in and around
New York and Washington. The alternative of taking up
separate residences was out of the question. Erica meanwhile
continued her training in The New York Botanical Garden
and obtained a useful diploma in horticulture.

As for me, I enjoyed for the first time in years the luxury of
ample spare time. I was particularly glad to be rid of the
burden of editorial responsibility for my periodical which had
weighed heavily on me for the past eighteen years and which
had prevented me from ever finding complete relaxation.

I now found time to do a lot of reading. I was also able to
give thought to a non-political problem which had fascinated
me for many years: the introduction of a standard time system
for the whole world. I was brought face to face with this
problem when, to my surprise, I discovered one day that,
whereas my parents had always celebrated my birthday on the
16th November, my birth certificate clearly stated that I was
bom on the 17th. It was some little time before I found the clue
to this mystery: it appears that at the precise moment when I
was born, the i6th November was not yet out in Europe,
whereas the 17th had already begun in Japan.

This gave me the idea of a standard time system applicable

236 AN IDEA CONQ,UERS THE WORLD

to every time zone of the world, irrespective of longitude.
Such a system must obviously be based on Greenwich Mean
Time and the International Date Line. World time could be
kept distinct from local time by the simple device of denoting
the twenty-four world hours by the twenty-four letters of the
Latin alphabet. Thus world day would begin at midnight
G.M.T., i.e. when the sun stands right above the International
Date Line; world midnight would be known as ‘Z’ hour. One
hour later, when the sun has moved to the Fiji Islands, world
time would be ‘A’ hour; eleven hours later still, when the sun
has reached the Greenwich meridian, world time would
register noon.

Recent developments in the fields of aviation, radio and
other long-distance communications clearly call for the adop¬
tion of some such system. Without world time it will become
increasingly difficult to work out adequate timetables for
transatlantic flights; for, if the flying time from Paris to New
York should one day be reduced to five hours, passengers would
arrive in New York one hour before leaving Paris!

The applications in the field of radio are equally important.
If, for instance, a radio programme begins in Paris at 6.20 p.m.
one evening, it is not at present easy for other cities to quote
this programme in terms of their own local times. Expressed in
terms of world time, however, the concert would simply be
announced for R.20 hours and, R.20 hours being a familiar
notion everywhere, it would not be difficult for the inhabitants
of any individual country to convert it into their local time,
i.e. 12.20 p.m. in New York, 9.20 a.m. in San Francisco, etc.
The advantages to international shipping and to long-distance
communications are equally obvious.

My suggestions for the adoption of a standard world lime
were published in the Congressional Record, the official bulletin
of congressional activities, as well as in the American press
which gave it an encouraging reception.

I then constructed a world clock with a triple dial to enable
anyone to ascertain at a glance—and without having to per¬
form involved mathematical sums—^what time it is locally.

NEW YORK AND ITS WOODS 237

according to world time and within each of the twenty-four
time zones. These time zones would be identified by the same
twenty-four letters as their corresponding world hours. I
recently took out a patent for this world clock. ‘

Notwithstanding the unfavourable developments on most
war fronts, I began slowly to propagate the Pan-European idea
in the United States. I asked Dr. Stephen Duggan, the presi¬
dent of the American Co-operative Committee of the Pan-
European Union, which I had helped to form sixteen years
earlier, to convene a members’ meeting. From the day of that
meeting onwards, we used to foregather at more or less regular
intervals and we managed to co-opt a number of influential
Americans to the Committee.

My first lectures since my arrival in the United States were
delivered in the autumn of 1940 to the Council of Foreign
Relations, a private body with powerful influence on the
shaping of American foreign policy. My next lecture was given
at International House and drew a large and cosmopolitan
student audience.

I took the follovnng line;

Technical progress makes it imperative for Europe to unite. The
world war which we are now fighting will be decisive not so much
on the general issue of union as such, as on the more specific issue
of what ideological character the United States of Europe are to
have. On this ideological plane a triangular battle is at present being
fought, the three contestants being Fascism, Bolshevism and Democ¬
racy.

If Hitler wins, Europe will go Fascist under German leadership.

If Stalin vdns, Europe will go Bolshevist under Russian leader¬
ship.

If Churchill wins, Europe will be a democracy under the leader¬
ship of the Anglo-American countries.

America is vitally interested in a British victory. A Fascist Europe
and a Bolshevist Europe would both be threats to the security of
the United States. A democratic Europe, on the other hand, would
be the best guarantee of that security.

The influence of the United States at the forthcoming peace
conference will depend largely on the power and efficiency of its

* The organ of the World Postal Union in Berne published my world-time
scheme (January 1948).

238 AN IDEA CONQUERS THE WORLD

air force. There is therefore no surer way of inducing a settlement
of the European problem on democratic lines than by taking
immediate steps to expand the size of the U.S. air force.

By means of lectures and articles I began to bring my views
to the notice of a wider public. We also took part in various
conferences in other cities at which post-war problems were
discussed. There were, however, only very few Americans who,
at that time, had real faith in the creation of a United States
of Europe on democratic lines. One of the men who had this
faith was John Foster Dulles whose acquaintance I made shortly
after my arrival in New York. As chairman of the Council of
Protestant Churches of America, Dulles took his stand firmly
on the side of a Pan-European peace programme.

During the tropical heat of the New York summer, we lived
in the northern part of the state in the wooded mountains of
the Adirondacks. On one side of our chalet was Big Moose
Lake, on the other side the virgin forest. This fabulous and
immense woodland, with its hundreds of lakes, stretches north
right into Canada.

The forest is known for its collection of wild deer. From our
windows we would often see stags venturing forth to drink at
the edge of the big lake. There were also large blue herons, and
beavers displaying their engineering skill by laboriously felling
trees across the waterways. Bull-frogs squatted interminably on
the water lilies, their big eyes looking uncannily human.

One evening I spotted one of the most timid animals in the
forest as it alit on our roof: a flying squirrel. The greatest
sensation of Big Moose, however, is the brovm bear. To get a
glimpse of it, summer guests used to wait for hours by the hotel
refuse dump. Then, all of a sudden, as darkness fell, a bear
would creep stealthily from the forest and, brushing aside the
hot cinders with its powerful claws, help itself to such morsels
of kitchen offal as it fancied.

One night, as we switched off the lights, we heard loud
whisding noises coming from the direction of the forest. Pre¬
sently two racoon couples, with nine young ones, turned up

NEW YORK AND ITS WOODS 239

at our front door. They soon became friendly and proceeded
to eat out of our hands. After a while a lonely porcupine, with
an amiable black face not unlike an ape’s, joined the group.
With an air of disdain, the porcupine squatted on its hind
legs and, turning its back on the racoons, gobbled its food,
using its paws somewhat ostentatiously like human hands. Its
bristly fur gave it the appearance of being draped in a large
wrap.

Once Idel tamed a few black-and-yellow striped chipmunks,
which look a curious cross between a mouse and a squirrel. She
also domesticated a grey squirrel which had fallen from its
nest. Franzl—as we called him—became a remarkable domestic
animal and performed his acrobatic tricks all over our furniture,
until one day he disappeared into the forest never to return
again.

During our stay at Big Moose Lake I continued to compose
my memoirs as well as various articles on which I was working.

Whenever nowadays we think of our wartime days in
America, Big Moose Lake stands out as one of our happiest
recollections. Though wc have impressive memories of
America’s technical sensations and of New York’s skyscrapers,
we feel most homesick of all for that free-and-easy life on the
lakes of the virgin forest. There is something quite unforgettable
about the short American spring, which sets in so suddenly
that the blossoms often shoot forth even before the leaves have
time to unfold. Pink azaleas mushroom in wild and picturesque
profusion on the banks of the lake, and huge lady’s slippers
grow all over the forest floor. The splendour of the spring
forest in New York State is a sight I shall never forget: its
panorama of dogwood flowers, white, pink and ivory, shine on
the evergreen foliage like stars in the night. Nor have I seen
many sights as impressive as the long American autumn which,
with its magic wand, appears to transform the entire forest into
one gigantic multi-coloured flowerbed of red and gold.

In the autumn of 1941, as the German armies were fanning
out across the Russian steppes and the end of the war seemed

240 AN IDEA CONQ.UERS THE WORLD

more remote than ever, Nicholas Murray Butler put my name
forward for one of the Carnegie Peace Foundation fellowships
at New York University. He introduced me to Harry Wood-
bum Chase, Chancellor of the University, which—with its fifty
thousand students and three thousand teachen—is the largest
in the Western world.

I had many talks with the Chancellor, with Harold O.
Voorhis, the Secretary-General, and with Joseph H. Park, the
Dean of the Faculty. In the end, I was asked to undertake the
direction of a special research seminar on post-war European
federation. As my co-director the university appointed Pro¬
fessor Arnold J. Zurcher, one of America’s greatest authorities
on European constitutional questions. Zurcher soon became
not only a close collaborator in all my work but also one of my
most intimate friends.

To staff my seminar I had to find eight hundred dollars for
each research student. Thanks to the generosity of American
and European friends, I soon succeeded in collecting the neces¬
sary funds. The seminar started work in February 1942. It was
made up of a group of uncommonly gifted workers of many
nationalities who, under my direction, soon applied themselves
to the task of examining the political, legal and economic impli¬
cations of European federation. The results of their studies were
later published by New York University.

As was to be expected, my seminar soon became the new
headquarters of the Pan-European movement. The university
supported my work in every conceivable manner. Besides, it
was invaluable from the point of view of my future political
activities that, instead of operating as an isolated foreigner, I
now worked under the aegis of one of America’s most respected
universities. I had at all times excellent personal relations with
my colleagues and with the governing body of the university.
Right from the start our collaboration proceeded on very har¬
monious lines. We understood each other perfectly and I was
soon filled with admiration for the remarkably idealistic out¬
look of American professors who, at a time when everyone
seemed engaged on bettering his own financial position, asked

NEW YORK AND ITS WOODS 24I

for no more than to be allowed to pursue, on their very modest
incomes, the intellectual aims which they had set themselves.

On 8th December 1941 the news of the Japanese attack at
Pearl Harbour fell like a bombshell. America was now at war.
The mood of the nation changed overnight and an air of be¬
wilderment which had reigned hitherto gave way to a powerful
resolve to win.

A few days before Pearl Harbour, I received a letter from
my sister Olga through Japanese diplomatic channels: it
brought me news of my mother’s sudden death. Unaffected by
the change in the political scene, she had continued to live
quietly in Mbdling until she died suddenly, as peacefully as she
had lived during her last years.

The passing away of my mother and the outbreak of war
with Japan became merged in my mind into one single sensa¬
tion of gloom and grief.

A fanatical campaign of hatred against Japan soon raged
throughout America. This campaign was directed not only
against the Mikado’s faithful subjects but even against Ameri¬
can citizens of Japanese or half-Japanese descent. The latter
were expelled from the Pacific coast areas and herded into
camps in the interior of the country. The rapid conquest of
South East Asia by the Japanese armies intensified this mood.
I feared that it might make my position at the university unten¬
able and thus reduce me to inactivity for the duration of the war.

Happily my fears did not materialize. Never in any part of
the United States did I suffer from this anti-Japanese feeling.
On the other hand, America’s entry into the war definitely had
the effect of increasing American interest in the problems of
post-war Europe. The United States had never yet lost a war
and the final victory of the Allies was therefore taken for
granted. Americans knew that they would have the deebive
word at the peace conference. In consequence, they began to
take an almost passionate interest in problems of European
reconstruction. The moment for setting up our research seminar
thus turned out to have been well chosen.

242 AN IDEA CONQUERS THE WORLD

Pan-Europe’s first public occasion in New York was to be a
memorial service for Aristide Briand. 7 th March 1942 being
the tenth anniversary of his death, we arranged the service for
that day. Somewhat to my surprise I was told that Americans
take no notice of days on which people died, only of those on
which they were born. Luckily the memorial service had only
to be postponed three weeks; for on 28th March Briand would
have celebrated his eightieth birthday. In recognition of the
fact that during his lifetime he had received an honorary degree
from New York University, the great assembly hall was placed
at our disposal.

Among those who made speeches were Alexis Legcr, Briand’s
closest friend and collaborator, and Louis Marlio. Marshall S.
Brown, Dean of the University, was in the chair. Under¬
secretary of State Sumner Welles, Count Sforza, Jan Masaryk,
Thomas Mann and many other eminent Americans and
Europeans sent messages of goodwill.

In my own speech I underlined the connection between the
initiative which Briand had taken for Pan-Europe and the
much discussed question of the Allies’ peace aims:

In all ages ideas backed by arms and arms backed by ideas have
transformed the world. Tomorrow the great idea of a free and united
Europe, backed by the heroic arms of the United Nations, may
become the dynamite to blow up the strongholds of Nazism and of
its New Disorder. History is the severe and cruel teacher of
humanity. What Briand planned for preventing the second world
war may well be executed at its end to prevent a third one; but only
after our poor generation had to experience for the second time that
European peace cannot be maintained without European federa¬
tion; that God has created our beautiful continent as a single
country, while human ambitions have again and again split and
dismembered it during centuries; that at last the time has come for
our Old World to follow the successful and glorious example of
America—the example of federation, of freedom within union.

Often in the course of history early victories lead to final disaster,
while the way to ultimate triumph is paved with defeats. So
Briand’s failure to unite Europe may one day be transformed into
his greatest glory. The seed he has spread through his courageous
initiative begins to germinate under the snow of the war. At the

NEW YORK AND ITS WOODS 243

future peace conference other statesmen will take up his ideas and
turn them into the greatest accomplishment of our century. And
when all his successful actions, from the Pact of Locarno to the pact
of Paris, will have passed away in the stream of time, his unsuccessful
attempt at uniting Europe will be the source of his lasting fame.

Then the prophecy of his great countryman Victor Hugo, pro¬
nounced as early as 1849, will at last be fulfilled: ‘ The day will come
when bullets and shells will be replaced by votes, by general and
popular elections, by the venerable arbitration of the great and
sovereign Senate, that will be for Europe what Parliament is
now for England, the National Assembly for Germany and the
Constitutive Assembly for France. The day will come when these
two gigantic countries, the United States of America and the United
States of Europe, will face and greet each other across the ocean,
exchanging their goods, their commerce, their industry, their art
and their genius—to civilize the planet, to fertilize deserts, to
improve creation under the eyes of the Creator; and to assure the
greatest benefit for all by uniting these two infinite forces;

The Brotherho^ of Man and the Power of God!

The American press took up this message in a positive and
sympathetic way. This showed how strongly Americans felt
for Briand and for France, notwithstanding the low ebb to
which Vichy had caused that nation’s prestige to sink. It also
showed how popular was the conception of a United States of
Europe, which now arose on the political horizon as a new and
remote possibility.

At the beginning of November 1942 came the decisive turn¬
ing-point in the war; the victory of the British at El Alamein,
the Russian defence of Stalingrad and the successful American
landings in North Africa. These events clearly heralded the
beginning of the end for the Third Reich. As a result, interest
in post-war problems became considerably intensified.

But at about the same time we began to notice the stirrings
of an opposition which had not hitherto made itself felt: the
opposition of the pro-Russian elements which at that time
pervaded the whole official life of the United States.

In the years which followed I kept on coming into conflict
with this opposition which was clearly inspired by the Kremlin
and whose character was, for the time being, passively obstructive

244 an idea conq,uers the world

rather than anything else. It seemed to be well realised
in these pro-Bolshcvik circles that open hostility to the idea of
Pan-Europe would only intensify American interest in it. They
therefore chose sabotage in preference to more overt methods.

The moment had, however, come to submit the question of
the United States of Europe to a wider public. With this in
mind, I convened the fifth Congress of Pan-Europe to New
York for 25th March 1943.

CHAPTER XXV

EUROPEAN CONGRESS IN EXILE

Our New York Congress was due to open formally on 25th
March 1943. Four days earlier Winston Churchill made one
of his famous broadcasts to the world. I had asked Churchill
to lend his moral support to the Congress by sending us a
message of good-will. Instead of doing this in the conventional
form by letter or cable, Churchill chose a medium which raised
his message to a sensational level.

For the first time since he had taken over the leadership of
His Majesty’s Government, Churchill appealed publicly for a
United Europe as one of the principal aims of British post-war
policy. In his speech he said:

One can imagine, that under a world institution embodying or
representing the United Nations, and some day all nations, there
should come into being a Council of Europe and a Council of Asia.

As according to the forecast I am outlining the war against Japan
will still be raging, it is upon the creation of the Council of Europe
and the settlement of Europe that the first practical task will be
centered. Now this is a stupendous business. In Europe lie most of
the causes which have led to these two world wars. In Europe dwell
the historic parent races from whom our Western civilization has
been so largely derived. I believe myself to be what is called a good
European; beside, I should deem it a noble task to take part in
reviving the fertile genius and in restoring the true greatness of
Europe.

I hope we shall not lightly cast aside all the immense work which
was accomplished by the creation of the League of Nations. Certainly
we must take as our foundation the lofty conception of freedom, law
and morality which was the spirit of the League. We must try—
I am speaking, of course, only for ourselves—we must try to make
the Council of Europe, or whatever it may be called, into a really
effective league with all the strongest forces concerned woven into
its texture; with a high court to adjust disputes and with forces,
armed forces, national or international or both, held ready to enforce
these decisions and prevent renewed aggression and the preparation
of future wars.

246 AN IDEA CONQ,UERS THE WORLD

Any one can see that this Council, when created, must eventually
embrace the whole of Europe and that all the main branches of the
European family must some day be partners in it. What is to happen
to the large number of small nations whose rights and interests must
be safeguarded? Here let me ask what would be thought of an army
that consisted only of battalions and brigades and which never
formed any of the larger and higher organizations like army corps.
It would soon get mopped up. It would therefore seem to me, at
any rate, worthy of patient study, that, side by side with the great
powers, there should be a number of groupings of states or con¬
federations which would express themselves through their own
chosen representatives, the whole making a council of great states
and groups of states.

It is my earnest hope, though I can hardly expect to see it fulfilled
in my lifetime, that we shall achieve the largest common measure
of the integrated life of Europe that is possible without destroying
the individual characteristics and traditions of its many ancient
and historic races. All this will, I believe, be found to harmonize
with the high permanent interests of Britain, the United States and
Russia. It certainly cannot be accomplished without their cordial
and concerted agreement and direct participation. Thus and thus
only will the glory of Europe rise again.

Churchill’s words provided the statesmanlike setting in which
our fifth Pan-European Congress opened a few days later. The
Congress was held under the auspices of New York University.
To guide the Congress through its agenda, I had already set
up a Steering Committee consisting of prominent Europeans.
Its chairmanship was shared equally between Fernando de los
Rios, former Foreign Minister of the Spanish Republic, Louis
Marlio and myself. Among the famous men who agreed to serve
on the committee, and to whom we used to refer as the Council
of Europe in America, were: Paul van Zeeland and Milan
Hod 2 a, both ex-Premiers; Rudolf Holsti and Radu Irimcscu,
former Ministers of Finland and Roumania respectively;
Richard Schuller, formerly a senior official of the Austrian
Government; Leon Schaus, Secretary-General of the Luxem¬
bourg Government; Sophocles Venizelos, who was shortly to
become Prime Minister of Greece and who carried on the Pan-
European tradition of his famous father; Professor Oscar
Halecki, Director of the Polish Institute in New York; Raymond

A EUROPEAN CONGRESS IN EXILE 247

de Saussurc, the well-known Swiss scholar; and Antonio di
Aguirre, at one time Prime Minister of the Basque Republic.
My wife took charge of the complicated technical arrange¬
ments for the Congress.

On the eve of the Congress a banquet was held in the big
ballroom of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. Speeches were made
by Ambassador William Bullitt, who presided over the dinner,
and by the three chairmen, de los Rios, Marlio and myself.
Chancellor Chase welcomed the delegates on behalf of New
York University. Then Stephen Duggan made a few intro¬
ductory remarks on behalf of the American branch of the Pan-
Europcan Committee. Finally, there was a speech by Senator
Harold Burton of Ohio, now judge at the Supreme Court of the
U.S.A.

The committees and working-parties set up by the Congress
met at the New York University Faculty Club. Marlio took the
chair at the Economic Committee. Our chief expert in matters
of Customs Union was Richard Schuller, who had conducted
Austria’s foreign trade policy for decades. Currency problems
were in the hands of two outstanding experts: Professor Ludwig
von Mises, an Austrian, and Andre Istel, a Frenchman, who
had been financial adviser to Paul Reynaud and to de Gaulle.
An outstandingly intelligent thinker, Istel later went to Bretton
Woods as head of the French delegation to the International
Monetary Conference. One expert on whose wise advice we
were always free to draw was Dr. Mauricio Hochschild, the
intelligent, far-seeing business man who never lost his faith in
the Pan-European idea even in the darkest days of the war.

The findings and conclusions of the Economic Committee
were published periodically by the Secretariat in bulletin form.

The chair of the Constitutional Committee was taken by
Fernando de los Rios. This committee worked in close liason
with my own study group. Its time was spent examining a
proposed European Federal Constitution which had been out¬
lined by Professor Zurchcr. After one year’s intensive drafting,
this document was finally published by the university. De los
Rios and Stephan Ladas, the brilliant Greek-American lawyer.

248 AN IDEA CONQ.UERS THE WORLD

signed it on behalf of the Congress. Zurcher and I added our
own signatures on behalf of the original study group, whose
secretary, Dr. Alexander Baird, together with various lawyers
from Europe and America, had made a substantial contribution
to the working out of the final text.*

Churchill’s speech and our Congress aroused much interest
in the press and among the public for the idea of a United States
of Europe.

Paradoxical as this may seem, it is easier in America than
anywhere else in the world to employ the press as a medium
of propaganda. For in New York there are only two important
morning dailies, the New York Times and the New York Herald
Triburu. Luckily, both papers had shown themselves well dis¬
posed towards our ideas and our activities.

One of America’s greatest journalists, Anne O’Hare Mc¬
Cormick, succeeded through her leading articles in influencing
the whole policy of the New York Times on European affairs.
Her knowledge and her shrewd judgment secured her a unique
position in American public opinion. Her active support of
European Union was therefore of decisive importance. In the
New York Herald Tribune, the chief protagonists of United
Europe were Mrs. Helen Ogden Reid and her son, Whitelaw
Reid. Dorothy Thompson, who used to write for the New York
Herald Tribune and later joined the New York Post, had been a
correspondent in Vienna in the early 1920’s and had at that
time interviewed me; since then, she had been a constant sup¬
porter of European Union. Walter Lippmann we had already
met on our first visit to America and we now renewed our old
contacts.

In Washington our chief press sponsors were Eugene Meyer
and Herbert Elliston, proprietor and editor respectively of the
Washington Post. We also had much support from William Philip
Simms, and Ludwell Denny of the Scripps-Howard Press and
from Edgar Ansel Mowrer. Then there was Henry Luce who,
through his three big periodicals Life, Time and Fortune, contri¬
buted substantially to the propagation of the United Europe

* Draft Constitution for a United States of Europe, New York Univenity, 1949.

A EUROPEAN CONGRESS IN EXILE 249

idea throughout the United States. It is fair to say that our
contacts with most of these journalists were based not only on
our common faith in a big project but also on personal friend¬
ships.

When I first arrived in New York I fancied that it would be
rather easy to gain support in the United States for the idea of a
European Union. My plan was to have a talk with President
Roosevelt at the earliest opportunity and to convince him of the
soundness of my ideas. I had in mind that after such a talk he
rather than I would see to it that these ideas met with the
approval of the Administration, of Congress—and of public
opinion. Almost immediately after our arrival, Nicholas Murray
Butler wrote to the President introducing me in very cordial
terms. Much to my disappointment, the President replied that
heavy pressure of work prevented him from granting me an
audience for the time being.

Quite apart from the political matters which I was anxious
to discuss with him, I would have liked to meet Franklin D.
Roosevelt because of the great personal respect I had for
the human qualities that had enabled him to develop his career
notwithstanding a great physical handicap and to lead it to such
a successful climax.

A second attempt to bring me together with Roosevelt was
made by my friend William Bullitt. Bullitt had had an interest¬
ing and colourful career. As a young man, his outstanding
intelligence and strong personality had brought him to the
notice of President Wilson. He drafted the famous Fourteen
Points and took part in the Peace Conference in Paris. When
the Republicans came back into office, Bullitt left the Adminis¬
tration and spent the next few years travelling in Asia and
Europe. It was at that time that I made his acquaintance in
Vienna. When Roosevelt was elected President in 1932, Bullitt
was appointed Ambassador, first in Moscow and subsequently
in Paris. In Moscow, he acquired great knowledge of the
Soviet Union; he also gained a reputation as a remorseless
critic and sworn enemy of the Soviet system. In Paris, Bullitt
was known to be Roosevelt’s personal observer of the entire

250 AN IDEA CONQUERS THE WORLD

European scene, and it was there that I frequently met him
both before and during the war.

Bullitt had now returned to Washington and, being a man
of independent means, occupied a leading jMJsition in Washing¬
ton society. He had always been convinced that our project
was on the right lines and now gave me considerable assistance
in publicity matters. Unfortunately his approach to Roosevelt
on my behalf also met with no success. Some months later
Bullitt happened to hand Roosevelt a memorandum, some
twenty pages long, on Allied war aims. As far as Europe was
concerned, Bullitt’s proposals tended in the direction of a
federal system. When I saw him shortly after, Bullitt told me
that Roosevelt had studied his memorandum carefully but had
flatly turned dovm the proposals it contained. It appeared
that the President was opposed to the idea of European Union,
and that this was a fact which I would simply have to accept.

This intimation was the heaviest political blow which my
ideas had yet received. All the plans and hopes I had based on
Roosevelt collapsed abruptly. Luckily for us, few people were
aware of the President’s attitude. He himself avoided official
utterances which might have committed him to any particular
aspect of post-war policy. Only one single authentic document
bearing on Roosevelt’s attitude in this respect has so far come
to light: this is an article about the Teheran Conference by
Forrest Davis in the Saturday Evening Post. According to Davis,
this article was drafted and partly corrected by Roosevelt
himself. In it, Roosevelt expounded the idea of his Big Plan
which proceeded on the assumption that after the war there
would only be two major powers—America and Russia. If
these two powers could live together in friendship, there might
be peace. If not, there would certainly be war and annihila¬
tion. The first requirement of foreign policy was therefore the
promotion of Soviet-American friendship. All other matters
must be subordinated to this—at least to the extent to which
they did not direedy affect American interests. The upshot
of this was that the problems of Europe must be solved by a
Soviet-American compromise. In other words, since Stalin

A EUROPEAN CONGRESS IN EXILE 25I

was in favour of creating an East European sphere of influence,
America had no choice but to accept this.

This W 31 S the reason why Churchill’s ‘United Europe’ speech
had such a bad reception in Washington official circles. One
year later, in May 1944, when Churchill spoke again in Par¬
liament about the necessity of creating a United Europe, the
White House and the State Department once more remained
silent.

Since the decline of Germany, Stalin had become the chief
antagonist of a United Europe. He had already succeeded
in detaching Roosevelt from this idea. Agents of the Soviet
Union were now penetrating into the precincts of the White
House and the State Department. These agents knew that, if
Moscow and Washington joined forces at the peace conference
to cold-shoulder the champions of United Europe, Europe
could not be united for many years to come.

Whilst we were preparing for our New York Congress, pro-
Soviet agents in America made efforts to thwart our prepara¬
tion. These agents had contacts in the various national ‘ refugee
groups ’, whose function it was to stir up trouble as frequently
as possible. Every member of my Committee was urged to
resign from it; even the University received letters advising it
to dissociate itself from this allegedly anti-Soviet undertaking.

To scotch these intrigues at their source, I wrote a personal
letter to Litvinoff, who was then Soviet Ambassador in
Washington. I asked him to give me the names of Soviet
citizens in America who did not occupy ofRcial positions and
whom I could invite to the Congress. I also invited him and
his wife to be guests of honour at the opening banquet.

• Litvinoff’s reply was as courteous as my letter. He knew of
no Soviet citizens in America other than those in official
positions, and as far as the banquet was concerned, he unfor¬
tunately had a long-standing engagement for that evening.
For me, this exchange of letters served the useful purpose of
helping to counter the assertion that our Congress was directed
against the Soviet Union and thereby against the solidarity
of the Allies. In this unfortunate struggle against Soviet and

252 AN IDEA CONQ,UERS THE WORLD

pro-Soviet intrigues, I leant heavily on the support of my
friend Fernando dc los Rios, a Socialist who was known to be
a man of independent judgment and unimpeachable moral
authority. Our close and cordial collaboration on European
affairs over many years is one of my most treasured memories.
His fine human qualities, his intellectual detachment, his
strong character and his aristocratic virtues created a degree
of confidence between us strong enough to withstand any
amount of intriguing. His presence by my side as co-chairman
of our Council of Europe was enough to convince all but the
most prejudiced that our movement stood well above political
issues.

My work in connection with various European refugee
groups helped me to make the somewhat startling discovery
that it is much easier to bring together Europeans of many
nations, even representatives of nations at war with each other,
than it is to make prominent men of the same nation sit down
at one table. The French colony was divided into Vichyists
and Gaullists, the Austrian colony into Monarchists and
Republicans. A French Gaullist thought it quite natural to
meet an Austrian Republican or an Italian anti-Fascist, but
would refuse to have any dealings with what he called the
‘men of Vichy’.

CHAPTER XXVI

I GAIN AMERICAN SUPPORT

Owing to the strong support I had received from the American
press, the idea of a United States of Europe gradually gained
ground among leaders of American foreign policy at the State
Department and in Congress.

My liaison man in the State Department was Cavendish
Cannon, later to become Ambassador in Belgrade. When our
movement first started. Cannon had been at the American
Legation in Vienna where he met and married an Austrian
lady. One way in which he differed from most diplomats was
that he shunned all social events. Instead, he worked un¬
tiringly, until late every night, at his desk in the State De¬
partment. He applied the thoroughness of a scholar to his
studies of political questions and became a living encyclo¬
paedia of current political history.

Whenever I visited Washington we had talks lasting for
hours and I received much useful advice from him. I kept him
informed about my political activities. He in turn handed my
memoranda and articles to leading officials in the department
and saw to it that they were read at once. Since his Vienna
days he had been convinced of the necessity of some sort of
European Union. This caused him to give me invaluable
assistance and at the same time made him and his wife close
personal friends.

The idea of a United Europe began to find support among
Senators. I could always count on ready help from Senator
Elbert Thomas of Utah, a former Mormon missionary in Japan
who enjoyed considerable moral authority in the Senate and
was a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee. He was
responsible for many of my speeches reaching the Congres¬
sional Record, Others who canvassed for United Europe in
the Senate were Senator Austin of Vermont, Senator William
J. Fulbright of Arkansas, Senator Carl Hatch of New Mexico,

254 an idea conq^uers the world

Senator George of Georgia, Senator Joseph Ball of Minnesota
and Senator Harold Burton of Ohio. Senator Burton K.
Wheeler of Montana, the leader of the Isolationist Group, also
was anxious to see Europe united in order to relieve America
of the heavy burden of a disintegrated and economically
dependent Europe. The squabbles of the Old World had
forced America twice in a single generation to send the flower
of her manhood across the ocean—there to fight and die for
Europe. To avoid a third world war. Senator Wheeler was
prepared to range himself unreservedly on the side of the
United States of Europe, and it was to his credit that he sue-
ceeded in making the majority of the Isolationist Senators
follow his lead.

The autumn of 1943 saw the appearance of a new book of
mine. Crusade for Pan-Europe,^ the final part of which deals with
problems of post-war policy. It received a good press, and I
seized the opportunity of sending copies of it to all those whose
support I was anxious to gain.

I soon reached the conclusion that I would get a particu¬
larly ready response for my ideas from Catholic circles. The
latter did not share the general admiration for the Soviet
Union. When the conflict arose between Russia and Poland,
they came out openly against Russia. This inclined them
favourably from the start towards the project of a United
Europe. I had talks with Cardinal Spellman of New York,
Cardinal Mooney of Detroit and Cardinal Stritch of
Chicago. It seemed that our political views were in full
harmony.

There were other circles in America which from the outset
had adopted a more sceptical attitude towards the Soviet
Union: one of these, the Socialist New Leader, soon began a
canvassing campaign for the United States of Europe.

In the autumn of 1944 New York University appointed me
Professor of History. I delivered lectures on the history of
Europe between the two world wars. Among my audience
were other teachers of history as well as war veterans who had
• G. B. Putnam & Sons, New York.

I GAIN AMERICAN SUPPORT 255

only recently returned from overseas campaigns. The latter
often astonished me by their remarkably accurate knowledge
of European conditions. At the end of my first lecture, one
member of the audience came up to me. He told me that he
had specially asked to be allowed to join my course because,
twenty years earlier, as a student in Berlin he had listened to a
lecture which my father had delivered to the Wednesday
Club. I had some difficulty in convincing him that the
man whom he described as ‘my father’ was actually
myself.

Whenever European statesmen visited New York I used the
opportunity to discuss post-war problems with them. In this
way I had meetings with Sikorski, the Prime Minister of
Poland, with Tsouderos, the Prime Minister of Greece, with
Spaak, BeneS and Masaryk.

My contact with de Gaulle was established by Andr^ Istel,
who handed him a letter from me in Algiers. When de Gaulle
came to New York, we made his personal acquaintance. I
also renewed my acquaintance with Leon Blum, whose views
on Europe had not been affected by the many changes of
fortune which he had suffered. When Guerin de Beaumont,
the French Consul-General, was about to introduce us, Blum
smiled, saying: ‘But we are old brothers-in-crime {complices).'

During these years I made many attempts to secure the
official representation of Austria on the side of the Allies. In
the middle of the war Churchill wrote to me that he would
gladly support my endeavours in this direction if I succeeded
in rallying round me the support of the principal refugee groups.
However, although the majority of the Austrian colony was
prepared for such a rally, my plans were obstructed by the
intransigence of a few extremists. The Catholics were annoyed
with the Socialists for continuing to favour Austria’s joining
a post-war Socialist Germany; the Socialists were similarly
unable to forget that the Catholics had followed the authori¬
tarian regime of Dollfuss.

Though I failed on the political level, my wife had more
success in the purely humanitarian field. She was able to arrange

256 AN IDEA CONQ,UERS THE WORLD

for generous assistance to be given to Austria. At the end of
1944, when the liberation of Austria was in sight, relief com¬
mittees had been set up for almost every eountry in the world—
except Austria. My wife soon managed to set up a committee
of leading Americans representing the Catholic and Protestant
charities, the two trade unions (A.F.L. and C.I.O.) and the
Quakers. We then went to Washington and obtained from the
State Department a licence for the formation of an official body
known as the American Relief to Austria (chairman: Robert
Hoguet).

Since the law was firm on the point that only American
citizens could be on the committees of these relief organizations,
my wife founded simultaneously the Auxiliary Committee of
the American Relief to Austria so as to be able to employ the
services of non-Americans too. She herself became first vice-
chairman; George E. Warren, vice-president of the Chase
National Bank, became chairman. There were also three
honorary chairmen: President Herbert Hoover; Alice Longworth
Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt’s daughter; and Father Robert
Gannon, S.J., President of New York’s Catholic Fordham
University.

With the help of these two committees, my wife now devoted
all her time to relief work. Through press appeals and personal
interventions in Washington she obtained permission for private
parcels to be sent to Austria. She also secured a quota of
UNRRA clothing for Austria and, together with her collabor¬
ators, collected clothing, food, medical supplies and shoes for
despatch to Austria through her two organizations. In this
relief work she was greatly assisted by many members of the
Austrian colony, most of all by Archduke Otto and his three
sisters. Archduchess Adelhcid, Charlotte and Elisabeth.

Every year she published a calendar showing the beauty
spots of Austiia. These calendars were publicly sold and the
proceeds used for buying leather for shoes on behalf of the
Relief Organization for Austrian Children, a body sponsored
by the Austrian Government. Erica was one of her mother’s
staunchest aids in all this work.

I GAIN AMERICAN SUPPORT 257

On 13th April 1945 Roosevelt died and Truman became
President. The war in Europe was moving to its close. The
change at the White House produced no change in the foreign
policy of the United States. The whole of American public
opinion had been hypnotized into believing that out of the war
there would emerge one single world—led by a consortium of
the Big Four: America, Russia, Britain and China.

Admittedly, the fact that a great deal of olTicial publicity
was then being given to the United Nations diverted attention
to some extent from the idea of United Europe. But this pub¬
licity in no way militated against our idea. It was quite possible
to find a place for Pan-Europe in the proposed world organiza¬
tion as one of several regional groups.

This question was on the agenda of the San Francisco Con¬
ference, which had been convened to decide on the organiza¬
tion of the United Nations. If the Conference decided that the
establishment of regional groups had to be subject to the great-
power veto, then all hope of Pan-Europe must be shelved for
the time being. To observe these discussions, we decided to
attend the Conference and accordingly travelled to San Fran¬
cisco in April 1945.

On our arrival there I established contact at once with the
representatives of the Latin-American countries whom I knew
to be well disposed towards regional projects. I found a par¬
ticularly keen supporter of my idea in Leras Camargo, Foreign
Minister of Colombia. The Arab League, too, was in favour of
regionalism. So was General Romulo, the representative of the
Philippines, who was aiming at a group of Far Eastern states
under the leadership of China.

Of the European statesmen, the one who gave me the greatest
assistance was Sophianopoulos, Foreign Minister of Greece. He
presided over one of the Conference’s most important com¬
mittees.

The most interesting personality I met in San Francisco was
the Prime Minister of the Union of South Africa, Field-Marshal
Jan Christian Smuts. This statesman, soldier and philosopher
was young in heart and spirit despite his advancing years.

258 AN IDEA CONQ,UERS THE WORLD

His special blend of greatness and modesty reminded me in
many ways of the unforgettable personality of Thomas Masaryk.
We talked about the reconciliation between Boers and British
after the South African War, which culminated in the establish¬
ment of the South African Union and in which Smuts himself
had played a decisive role. We shared the hope that Europe
would follow this example and work for unification after the
present war. Smuts supported me unreservedly in my demand
for a regional organization.

The San Francisco debates on regionalism gave rise to the
now famous Article 52 of the United Nations Charter, which
permitted the establishment of regional groups within the
U.N.O. framework.

I took advantage of the presence of statesmen and press
representatives from every part of the world to make publicity
for our own campaign. I also gave a press conference and
delivered a lecture at the University of California in Berkeley.

While the Conference was still sitting, news came of Hitler’s
death, of the collapse of the Third Reich and of the end of the
European war.

San Francisco is one of the most beautiful cities in America.
It reminded me in many ways of Lisbon. In a national park
not far from the city we saw the famous ‘ redwoods ’, woodland
giants more than three thousand years old, which have sur¬
vived countless forest fires. In one of these giants there is an
archway large enough for a car to pass through.

We spent a few days on the Pacific coast—on the lovely
Monterey peninsula, which is magnificently arrayed with rare
trees and flowers. A colony of sea-lions lives on a rock not far
from the coast. They are huge animals and roar loudly at all
times of the day, as they disport themselves in the water or
sunbathe on their rock. Apart from their roar, they have,
however, more in common with pigs than with lions.

After San Francisco we visited Los Angeles and the Grand
Canyon. Much has been written about the Grand Canyon, but
none of it conveys the true majesty of that scene. Indeed, no
painting or photograph could hope to recapture its grandeur.

I GAIN AMERICAN SUPPORT 259

It is as if time had here been projected into space, for the
canyon’s steps and layers mark the different centuries of man’s
history: it is as if the fancy imagination of a modern painter,
rather than nature’s moods, had been at work here.

We were holidaying in our chalet near Big Moose Lake when
the fint atom-bomb fell on Japan and the war moved to its
end. From then onwards public feeling about Russia underwent
a remarkable change. The clumsy and provocative attitude
adopted by the Kremlin suddenly opened American eyes to the
fact that the Russians had ceased to be allies and were now com¬
petitors, opponents and rivals—in Europe as well as in Asia.

This change in public feeling came about with amazing
swiftness. Hope that the United Nations might prove a panacea
for all the world’s ills vanished under the pressure of continued
Russian obstruction. American foreign policy suddenly found
itself faced with the task of halting the Russian advance before
it had conquered all Europe and Asia and isolated the United
States. This new feeling of world responsibility stood Pan-
Europe in excellent stead. Just as the ‘brown peril’ had helped
the movement in 1939 and 1940, so the ‘red menace’ now
enabled it to become topical once again.

We first noticed this change of feeling on a lecture tour up
and down the country in November 1945. I started lecturing
in Texas, in the cities of San Antonio, Dallas and Houston.
From there our itinerary took us to Wichita (Kansas), Dubuque
(Iowa), Indianapolis (Indiana), Toledo (Ohio), Louisville
(Kentucky) and, finally, Detroit and Chicago. Everywhere the
idea of a United States of Europe met with understanding and
sympathy. The former pro-Russian opposition had vanished
as if by magic.

On this journey, as well as on our journey to California,
my wife organized local groups in aid of the Austrian relief
action. Wherever she went she found touching evidence of
willingness to help.

There was considerable astonishment in political circles
when, at the beginning of December 1945, Collier's, the much-
read monthly magazine, published an article by George Creel,

26 o an idea CONQ.UERS THE WORLD

its Washington correspondent, about President Truman and
the United States of Europe. For us this was no surprise. Creel
had shown us the manuscript a month earlier. He had also
told us the remarkable story behind it.

In his young days Creel had been editor of the local news¬
paper at Independence, a small town in the State of Missouri.
After his political lectures, a farmer used to come up to the
rostrum and ask for additional information. The name of this
farmer was Harry S. Truman. In the First World War Creel
had been chief information officer on President Wilson’s staff.
Since Truman’s arrival at the White House, Creel had been a
regular guest there. One day Creel asked Truman what he
really thought about the United States of Europe. ‘It’s an
excellent idea,’ was Truman’s spontaneous reply. Creel asked
for permission to publish this opinion. Having obtained this
in principle, he proceeded to write a comprehensive article
about the Pan-European movement, its background and its
aims. He added that Truman shared the views of its sponsors
and that a decisive initiative in this respect was to be expected
from him. Truman read the manuscript and signified his
approval. Truman thus became the first leading American
statesman to identify himself publicly with the project for a
United States of Europe.

Creel’s article was bought by Readers’ Digest and widely
distributed throughout the world.

In March 1946 I had a full discussion with the then Under¬
secretary of State, Dean Acheson, and with Ben Cohen,
Adviser to the State Department. Both were men of outstanding
intelligence, who showed great understanding for the European
question. They were already busy planning a basis for a
European economic union in the spirit of thtf Marshall Plan, but
came up against difficulties which made it necessary to post¬
pone such a project.

By the middle of 1946 the United States—from the White
House to the State Department, from Congress to public
opinion—was ready to promote the United States of Europe,
provided that the European nations themselves desired such a

I GAIN AMERICAN SUPPORT 261

union. For nothing was more alien to the American way of
thinking than to impose their own system on a reluctant
Europe.

The burning question was whether, after all the terrors of a
long war, Europe was really prepared to accept a federal form
of government. The reports which reached me from Europe
were largely contradictory. Some informants pretended to
know that the resistance movements against Hitler and Musso¬
lini were distinctly Pan-European in character; others were
equally convinced that these movements were basically of
nationalist or Communist orientation.

I was often reminded of what Nicola Politis had said to me
at the beginning of the war: ‘At last the time has come for
the realization of your project. The only thing I am afraid of
is that if the war proves to be short nothing will be changed
at all; whilst if it proves to be long there will arise national
hatreds and prejudices so deep that the realization of Pan-
Europe may have to be shelved once again.’

The European Governments themselves, anxious above all
not to incur the displeasure of Soviet Russia, made no com¬
ments whatever. The European press was equally reserved.

Was Europe at last ready to unite? I looked for an answer,
but found none. Only in Europe would I find out whether
the Second World War had killed or given a new lease of life
to the idea of Pan-Europe. We decided to travel home on the
little French steamer Oregon, leaving New York on gth June
1946.

While we were making preparations for the journey we
realized that we had ceased being strangers in America, that
part of our beings had struck firm roots in the New World.
We had concluded many wonderful friendships. As we left,
our friends showered us with tokens of affection, and our cabin
looked half flower-shop, half patisserie.

We knew that we would not be away for long and that we
would always look forward to returning to this great country
which in the years of our exile had been less an asylum than a
second home.

CHAPTER XXVll

BACK TO EUROPE

Three smiling passengers stood on the deck of the liner Oregon
as it sailed slowly eastwards past the Statue of Liberty. Gradu¬
ally, almost imperceptibly, the skyscrapers of Manhattan
vanished in the mist on the distant horizon. The Oregon carried
some seventy passengers, mostly French, who, like us, were
filled with happiness at the thought of returning at last to their
own liberated country. For all practical purposes, we were
already on French soil. The Oregon was a floating version of a
French de famille; service, food and atmosphere were all

typically French.

The crossing took ten days, which we spent in rest and
relaxation. Provided the weather is fine, an Atlantic crossing
by small boat, in close contact with sea, sun and air, is incom¬
parably more exhilarating than travelling in a luxury hotel
afloat. The sea was as calm as a pond and our ship seemed
scarcely to be moving.

For ten days we were completely unaware of space or time
and devoted ourselves exclusively to thoughts, dreams and
hopes for the future. There was no newspaper, no telephone
and no mail. The only communication which reached me dur¬
ing the crossing was a radio telegram from Winston Churchill,
dated 15 th June 1946, which read as follows: ‘What is the latest
date you will be in Paris as I want my son-in-law Duncan
Sandys to come and see you there?’ We regarded this as an
excellent omen, for we hoped that the man who had saved
Europe would wholeheartedly devote himself, now that he
had been freed from all burdens of government, to the creation
of a United States of Europe.

I arrived in Europe with an open mind and no preconceived
notion as to how the Pan-European movement might be
revived. Europe itself would suggest the answer to this problem
and I was prepared to await this answer patiently.

BACK TO EUROPE

263

On 18th June we sighted the Channel Islands and, shortly
after, the French coast. It was six years to the day since on
that tragic i8th of June 1940 we had taken leave of French soil
at Port Bou. Tears came to many eyes as we entered the port
of Le Havre. The ruins of the city stood out like a symbol of the
battered and crucified continent on which we were about to
step ashore.

Our train took us through devastated cities. But the country¬
side, with its green fields and meadows, seemed somehow to
have forgotten the war more quickly. Herds of cattle grazed
happily where only two years ago there had raged one of the
most murderous battles in history.

After our impression of Le Havre, we were surprised to find
Paris virtually unscathed. Never had it seemed to us more
beautiful. After six years in New York we found Parisian houses
graceful and well-proportioned, the squares large and spacious
and the city generally as if it had been designed by a great
artist and executed as an integrated masterpiece.

There was, of course, much evidence of poverty all around,
but at the same time there could be sensed a tremendous up¬
surge of hopefulness, not unlike that joie de vivre which is
associated with convalescence from a really serious sick-bed.
Everyone felt that, after years of terror and misery, things were
at last taking a turn for the better, and in the hearts and eyes
of Parisians one sensed the early spring of European recovery.

I began to ask everyone, politicians and journalists, chauffeurs
and waiters, what they thought of the idea of a United States
of Europe. The reply I received was always the same: ‘If only
it were possible! It seems the only chance we have of extricating
ourselves from our present plight.’

Back in Gstaad, our faithful Berta came running out of the
house to greet us. Tears were in her eyes: during all the years
of our absence, she had looked well after the house and now
took some pride in handing it back to us unchanged and un¬
damaged. The outer hedge had grown so high that it looked like
a forest. Apart from that, all was exactly as we had left it.
Whilst the old world had collapsed and a new one risen in its

264 an idea conquers the world

place, here—as if by a miracle—time had evidently stood still.
Our flight to America, our years on the banks of the Hudson
and our return home—they all seemed like a strange dream.

We soon resumed our daily lives as if they had never been
interrupted. This seemed easy in a Switzerland that was a kind
of museum displaying relics of a vanished world, a ‘national
park’ of pre-war culture.

Before long we were back in Paris making contact with the
statesmen who were assembled there to conclude peace treaties
with Italy and the satellite states. I had the definite feeling that
the idea of a United Europe began to be universally accepted
as a practical solution, but that no one dared to make a con¬
crete suggestion for fear of being looked upon as a dreamer—
and for even greater fear of how Russia might react to such a
suggestion.

It was clear to me that the revival of our movement as a
mere propaganda organization would be pointless at a time
when the project met with so little resistance. There were
certainly many people who refused to believe in the practical
possibility of a European federation, but there were few
who opposed it on principle.

Oddly enough, hardly any Europeans knew that Pan-Europe
had the strong support of public opinion in the United States.
Most Europeans had even a kind of preconceived notion that
Americans looked with horror upon the prospect of a United
Europe and would prevent such a move at all costs. They
laboured under the delusion that America would welcome a
divided and quarrelsome Europe, too weak to be a rival for
political power or a competitor in trade. I heard it said on many
occasions that the unification of Europe was impossible since
neither the United States nor the Soviet Union would tolerate it.

I had, in this connection, to clear up a double misapprehen¬
sion: first, I had to convince Americans that, contrary to their
beliefs, the peoples of Europe were, in fact, ready to unite, and
secondly I had to convince Europeans that, contrary to their
beliefs, America was ready to support the political and eco¬
nomic federation of the Continent.

BACK TO EUROPE 265

One of the most remarkable phenomena I came across in
post-war Europe was that the wave of nationalism, which had
caused two world wars, seemed at last to have exhausted itself.
Only its ghost remained to haunt the Continent. Thus the first
French elections after the war showed that an overwhelming
majority of Frenchmen supported the three parties which were
distinctly supra-national in character; the Catholic M.R.P.,
the Social Democrats and the Communists,

In some respects, this phenomenon was reminiscent of the
Thirty Years’ War which had begun as a fanatical religious
struggle and which ended as a fierce fight for political and
dynastic power. At the conclusion of this so-called war of
religion. Catholic France, led by a cardinal, found itself on
the same side as Protestant Sweden, but ranged against the
Catholic House of Austria. As the war dragged on, the religious
fanaticism which had caused it to start somehow petered out
completely.

In the Second World War European nationalism suffered
almost the same fate. To my amazement, the chauvinistic front
against which I had fought for more than two decades seemed
somehow to have vanished altogether. Pan-Europe had no
longer to wage a war on two fronts. Serious opposition came
henceforth from one quarter only; the Communists. But even
the Communists did not want to prevent the unification of
Europe altogether; they merely wished to carry it out in their
own manner. Their aim was a Soviet Europe under Russian
leadership.

At the end of the Second World War, Europe was divided
less into national camps than into camps of different ideologies.
Communist parties all over Europe formed one strong camp,
whilst anti-Communists, at first disorganized, were now begin¬
ning to display a similar solidarity in the face of common
danger. There is no doubt that today a French anti-Communist
feels much closer to an Itzdian of similar persuasion than to a
Communist sympathizer in his own country. Ideological con¬
cepts have taken the place of national ones. Under Hitler,
nationalism, which for a century and a half had been the chief

266 AN IDEA CONQ.UERS THE WORLD

driving force behind European politics, first reached its climax
and shordy after suffered an abrupt eclipse.

The eclipse of nationalism marked the beginning of a new
chapter in the history of Europe.

These new factors in the situation had obviously to be taken
into account in deciding on our plan of action. Our main
difficulty was that, whilst the people of Europe were clearly
ready for federation, their Governments, still tainted by pre¬
war ultra-nationalism, took a different view.

Our task was therefore to bring pressure to bear on Govern¬
ments and thus induce them to take the initiative towards
Pan-European federation. Externally, such pressure could be
applied by the United States; internally, it would have to
emanate from the various national Parliaments. Unless we
could achieve some success in mobilizing these two pressure-
groups in our interest, there was no hope of early action.
These thoughts led me to the following plan: to strengthen
our publicity campaign in the United States and to mobilize
at the same time as much parliamentary support as possible
within Europe.

Wherever they exist. Parliaments tend to develop into
clearing-houses between Governments and peoples. Govern¬
ments depend on Parliaments, just as Parliaments depend on
the electorate. Unanimous support by parliamentarians of the
idea of European federation would therefore compel Govern¬
ments more effectively than any other move to give serious
thought to the United States of Europe.

In Geneva I called on the Secretary-General of the Inter¬
parliamentary Union, Leopold Boissier, and discussed my
plan with him. He told me frankly that it would be impossible
to carry out such a plan within the framework of his union.
He invited me however to attend the next meeting of the
Union Council, so that I would have an opportunity of estab¬
lishing personal contact with parliamentary representatives
of many countries.

This meeting took place at St. Moritz in the first days of
September. Many of the representatives present accepted my

BACK TO EUROPE

267

plan at once. I met there among others the Chairman of the
Belgian Parliamentary Socialist Group, Georges Bohy, and his
wife; both were ardent supporters of federation. I also met the
former Austrian Minister, Dr. Eduard Ludwig, now Chair¬
man of the Foreign Policy Committee of the Austrian Parlia¬
ment, with whom I had worked before the war when he was
Senior Public Relations Officer of the Dollfuss Government.

One day Duncan Sandys visited me in Gstaad. He told me
that Churchill was working on plans for a Pan-European
initiative and that he was anxious to collaborate with me in
this respect. I proposed that Churchill, like Briand in former
times, should become honorary president of the Pan-Europe
Union which he and I would then reorganize jointly. Sandys,
however, was more in favour of creating an entirely new
organization which Churchill, he and I would activate together.
The principle of creating a new organization appealed to me
and, at Sandys’s request, I handed him a list of all leading
personalities in Britain and on the Continent who had for¬
merly been associated with our movement and on whose
assistance we might therefore be able to count in such a venture.

Churchill spent that summer at Bursincl on the Lake of
Geneva. On 14th September I lunched there as his guest. He
told me that he had been invited to deliver a lecture in Zurich
and that he proposed to use this opportunity to make a strong
appeal for the unification of Europe. He added that he would
naturally give full credit to what I had already accomplished
through my movement. The heavy burden of the war years
seemed to have left no mark on Churchill. He had hardly aged
since I last saw him and was in a buoyant mood, full of energy
and wit. I also had the feeling that his fame had in no way
gone to his head. He remained modest and human, ready to
listen to advice and criticism.

When we came to talk of Germany and Japan, he empha¬
sized how strongly opposed he was to any policy based on
repaying old scores: ‘It is a firm principle of mine,’ he said,
‘that one should only hate when this becomes absolutely
necessary.’ After lunch he took me to see his latest canvas.

268 AN idea C0NQ,UERS THE WORLD

Painting, he said, was the greatest relaxation he knew, because
it saved him the trouble of thinking! He was busy painting a
large landscape of the Lake of Geneva with an old cedar tree
in the foreground. His paintings are in keeping with his
character and literary style: bold and large, with strong
impressive contoun and brilliant colours, but without much
attention to detail. His dainty handwriting stands in curious
contrast to this bold manner—like all men, he is made up of
contrasting features. It is perhaps this very tension between
contrasts which gives such eminent stature to his personality.

Five days later we listened on the wireless to his memorable
Zurich speech, which contained the following reference to our
movement:

I wish to speak to you today about the tragedy of Europe. . . .
If Europe were once united in the sharing of its common inherit¬
ance there would be no limit to the happiness, the prosperity and
the glory which its three hundred million or four hundred million
people would enjoy. . . .

There is a remedy which, if it were generally and spontaneously
adopted by the great majority of people in the many lands, would,
as by a miracle, transform the whole scene and would in a few years
make all Europe, or the greater part of it, as free and as happy as
Switzerland is today. . . . What is this sovereign remedy? It is to
recreate the European family, or as much of it as we can, and to
provide it with a structure under which it can dwell in peace,
safety and freedom. We must build a kind of United States of
Europe. ...

Much work has been done upon this task by the exertions of the
Pan-European Union which owes so much to Count Coudenhove-
Kalergi, and which demanded the services of the famous French
patriot and statesman Aristide Briand. . . .

Let Europe arise I

This speech had an electrifying effect throughout Europe.
As if by magic, the idea of European federation suddenly
reappeared in all leading articles and in every conversation.
This effect resulted not only from the wording of the speech,
but even more from the personality of the speaker and from
the fact that it was delivered at such a critical moment in

BACK TO EUROPE 269

Europe’s history. For Churchill was known to be no abstract
poet, no philosopher, no dreamer, no Utopian, but—as he had
proved in so many ways—the greatest practical politician of
the century: the man who had defeated and destroyed Hitler
and Mussolini and whose political and military genius had
saved Britain at a time when, lonely and forsaken, she faced a
continent held together by a ruthless and determined aggressor.

All who had previously nursed secret and timid hopes now
came out into the open and supported Churchill’s appeal for a
United Europe. Whispering voices swelled into a clamour, the
clamour into a vast chorus, loudly demanding a United
Europe.

The moment had been skilfully chosen. Hope of peaceful
co-operation between the Great Powers within the framework
of the United Nations had all but vanished. Europe wais in
search of a new idea, a new slogan. The ground had been
prepared by our Pan-European propaganda campaign of pre¬
war days. Churchill’s speech kindled the latent fire as lightning
sets afiame a parched haystack. The Zurich speech did more
for our movement than could have been achieved by the most
elaborately staged international congress.

I wrote at once to Field-Marshal Smuts, who happened at
the time to be in Europe, and asked him to give official sup¬
port to Churchill’s appeal. A few days later Smuts delivered
brilliant speeches in the Belgian and Dutch Parliaments,
underlining the views already put forward by Churchill.

The following month Churchill invited me to his home at
Chartwell, where I had fint made his acquaintance almost
nine years earlier. Duncan Sandys joined us. We discussed the
question of reorganizing the old movement under our joint
leadership. I proposed United Europe as a new title. Churchill
was to be our first president, whilst two vice-presidents would
be chosen from the ranks of the Socialist and Catholic parties
on the Continent. I was to act as secretary-general and Sandys
as my deputy. Churchill approved the outlines of this proposal.
His intention was to set the ball rolling during the coming
winter by forming a British national committee. This would

270 AN IDEA CONQUERS THE WORLD

consist inter alia of the members of the existing British section
of the Pan-European Movement. In the spring he planned to
hold a meeting between this United Europe Committee and
various Pan-European personalities on the Continent, at which
plans for our future co-operation would be finally agreed.

The greatest obstacle to the realization of this programme
lay in the negative attitude which the British Labour Party
displayed towards Churchill. But Churchill hoped, relying on
the co-operation of his friend Attlee, to convert the Labour
Party to his plans by the following spring.

After lunch, Churchill took me round the estate and showed
me the park which he had himself designed and laid out. On
a gable above the house could be seen the picturesque flag of
the Cinque Ports, Churchill’s personal standard since the King
had appointed him Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports during
the war. With considerable pride, Churchill showed me a
garden wall and a skilfully designed brick arch which he had
built with his own hands. Then he took me to his study where
he showed me his paintings, mostly landscapes and still-lifes.
He told me that the Chartwell property had been purchased
by a group of friends who wished to transform it into a national
museum after his death. He drew my attention to a large hall,
full of wartime souvenirs which had already been selected for
this museum. On one wall was the original scale model of the
Mulberry Harbour, as it had been assembled and moored at
sea to make possible the invasion of the Normandy beaches.

On another wall, in a frame, was the original Atlantic
Charter, complete with handwritten corrections made by
Churchill and Roosevelt. I told Churchill that this Atlantic
Conference in Newfoundland waters had been prophesied
as early as the sixteenth century by this verse of Nostradamus:

Un jour seront damis les deux grands maistres
Lcur grand pouvoir sc verra augment^:

La terre ncufue sera cn scs hauts estres,

Au sanguinaire, le nombre racompti.^

> One day shall be friends the two great masters, their great power shall be the
greater for it. Newfoundland shall then come into its own, and numbered the days
of the bloodthirsty man.

BACK TO EUROPE 271

Churchill seemed interested but unconvinced. He is not a
believer in prophecies. A man of action such as he must abhor
the thought that we are mere puppets in the hands of God,
that a kind of microfilm of our entire life, from beginning to
end, lies deposited in God’s archives and that only a select few
like Nostradamus possess the gift to gaze through the thick
veil of the future at the shape of things to come.

As we parted, Churchill fixed his look on me and said:
‘You may be sure that a man like me, upon whom life has
bestowed an abundance of success, does not wish to use the
United Europe movement to further any personal ambitions.
You have created this movement. It could therefore be con¬
ducted without my assistance—but hardly without yours!
You may rest assured that I will always deal fairly with you.’

Meanwhile, I had already done some spade-work in Paris
to revive the movement there. Andr^ Istel, whom I consulted
in New York about the choice of a suitable candidate to take
charge of our French activities, recommended Ren6 Courtin,
Professor at the Sorbonne and economic Editor of Le Monde.

Courtin at once accepted my invitation and we started the
formation of a French non-party committee for a united Europe.

CHAPTER XXVra

ACTION THROUGH PARLIAMENTS

Back in Gstaad I concerned myself with the preparations for
the organization of the European Parliamentary Union. To
begin with, I had to find out which of the members of Parlia¬
ment were ready to identify themselves openly with our move¬
ment. This could only be done by means of a poll. I therefore
addressed a circular letter to 3,913 parliamentary representa¬
tives, enclosing a card which I asked them to return to me after
answering the following question; ‘Are you in favour of the
establishment of a European federation within the framework
of the United Nations?’ Each recipient had only to answer
‘yes’ or ‘no’ and sign the card which was already addressed
to me at Gstaad. I had arranged for Erica to forward to me in
New York a list of those who had replied.

After I had signed all the letters, we left Cherbourg for New
York on loth November on the He de France. A few days later
we were back in our house on the Hudson. Erica remained in
Gstaad. While in New York, she had suffered a great deal from
home-sickness and was now determined not to leave her
beloved mountains again.

With considerable excitement we awaited the results of our
poll. Soon every mail brought reports from Erica. Her com¬
muniques sounded cheerful and it seemed as if the results
would exceed our wildest expectations. Almost every answer
was in the affirmative; ‘no’s’ were few and far between. All
parties except the Communists sent in their cards. Even the
fact that most Communists refrained from answering—instead
of sending in a negative reply—had some significance, for the
party leaders knew only too well that by sending in a negative
reply their parliamentary candidates risked forfeiting the
allegiance of many of their voters.

Among those who answered ‘yes’ was Vincent Auriol, who
shortly after was elected first President of the Fourth Republic.

ACTION THROUGH PARLIAMENTS 273

His opposite number in Italy, President Einaudi, also gave an
affirmative answer and so did many former Prime Ministers,
among them Rcynaud, Daladier, Paul Boncour, Bonomi, Parri,
Tsaldaris, Papandrcou, Venizelos and van Zeeland. Among
Ministers in office who answered ‘yes’ were Henri Queuille,
Count Sforza, and many others.

France and Italy were clearly in the van of the movement.
The British attitude tended to be more reserved; fears had been
expressed in some quarters lest a federation of Europe might
conflict with the interests of the Commonwealth. But to our
surprise, there were few negative replies even from Britain.
The Scandinavian countries had reservations of a different
kind, due largely to the geographical proximity of Soviet
Russia. In view of the Russian occupation, I refrained from
sending my questionnaires to Austria. But I soon received
unanimous declarations of support from both major parties,
the Catholics and the Socialists. From Greece, two-thirds of the
parliamentary representatives replied in the affirmative, among
them practically all the Party leaders.

My private poll had almost assumed the proportions of an
indirect plebiscite. Those to whom I addressed it were under no
compulsion to answer and could easily have thrown my letter
into the wastepaper basket, had they not been convinced of the
predominantly Pan-European feeling of their electors. Thanks
to this plebiscite, it became clear beyond the shadow of a doubt
that an overwhelming majority of the electors of Europe
favoured the creation of a United States of Europe and that
only an insignificant minority was actively opposed to it.

Those representatives who had not sent in replies were again
approached by me from New York. In my reminder, I drew
their attention to the results hitherto achieved. I also sent a
list of these results to representatives who had answered in the
affirmative enclosing the following Memorandum:

In view of the urgent necessity to take practical steps toward a
Federation of Europe, the Committee for the European Con¬
gress has recently addressed to all Members of the Parliaments of
Belgium, Denmark, Eire, France, Great Britain, Greece, Italy,

274 an idea conq,uers the world

Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland,
the following question; ‘ are you in favour of the establishment

OF A EUROPEAN FEDERATION WITHIN THE FRAMEWORK OF THE U.N.?’

The overwhelming majority—over ninety per cent—of the
numerous answers received until now are in the affirmative.

Thus has it become possible to take the initiative by the following
steps;

1. In every Parliament, Members having given affirmative
replies are invited to constitute immediately non-partisan Parlia¬
mentary Committees for European Federation, to study and promote
the cause of European Union.

2. Each of these Committees should then be extended by the
inclusion of all other Members of Parliament approving its objective.

Thus every Committee should aim at attracting a majority of
Members of its Parliament, to compel its Government to embrace
the cause of European Union.

Every member of these Committees should try to include
European Federation in his party’s official programme.

3. To merge the activities of these various Parliamentary Com¬
mittees, a European Congress is being organized for June 1947, at
Geneva.

Each of these Parliamentary Committees will be invited to send
Delegations to this Congress, in proportion to the total of its national
population, one Delegate corresponding to one million of his or
her co-nationals.

4. This European Congress, attended only by Members of
European Parliaments, shall take the lead in the campaign for
European Federation.

It shall determine what other European Parliaments shall be
invited to join.

It shall draft a European Charter.

It shall recommend to the European Governments practical steps
to be taken to promote the political and economic union of Europe.

It shall submit to the United Nations Organization suggestions
for the establishment of a Regional Organization for Europe, accord¬
ing to Article 52 of the United Nations Charter.

It shall organize special Commissions to study the various prob¬
lems of European Federation.

It shall examine the organization of a European Plebiscite on the
issue of Federation.

It shall constitute itself as a permanent body, meeting periodically
and representing a kind of preliminary Parliament for Europe.

It shall elect a Council of Europe, to serve as a permanent
advisory body to the Governments and to the United Nations.

ACTION THROUGH PARLIAMENT!

275

This Council, composed of leaders from various European nations
and parties, shall constitute the Continent’s supreme moral authority
and lead Europe toward a new era of peace, prosperity and liberty.

The following table shows the results of the poll:

The following replies were given by parliamentary representatives to the question: ' Are you
in favour of a European federation within the frame or the United Nations?’

Vo of

No. of

Persons

VoOf

No. (f

Questioned

Replies

Counl^

Type <tf Parliament

Q^sHmed Replies

r«

No

res No

res

No

National Assembly

165

40

38

2

23 1.2

95

5

Austria

Federal Assembly

48

9

X

19 2.0

90

10

Chamber

0^

LLI

no

,

,

Belgium

Senate

167

45

45

0

27 0

0

Second Chamber

22

18

82

18

Denmark

First Chamber

77

14

>3

17 1.3

93

7

National Assembly

610

332

396

6

53-5 «

98.2

1.8

France

Council of the Republic

310

124

124

0

40 0

too

0

United

House of Commons

606

173

3

28 0.5

1-7

Kingdom

Greece

National Assembly

354

211

210

I

59 0-3

99-5

0.5

Chamber

138

40

34

6

25 4-4

85

15

Iceland

Senate

59

18

ib

2

27 3-4

89

Italy

Constituent Assembly

554

357

357

0

64.5 0

too

0

Luxembourg

Chamber

5J

33

39

I

63 2

97

3

Second Chamber

99

58

53

5

53'5 5

91-3

8.7

Netherlands

First Chamber

49

26

25

51 2

96

4

Norway

Parliament

150

16

>3

3

8.7 2

81

19

Second Chamber

330

33

28

5

12.2 2.2

85

15

Sweden

First Chamber

30

26

4

87

J3

National Council

193

104

99

5

51 2.6

95

5

Switzerland

Civic Council

44

20

1

45 2.3

95

5

Total

4.956

1,818

1,766

52

41.5 ••2

97-2

2.8

Americans are more easily impressed by figures than by
arguments, I therefore arranged for the greatest possible pub¬
licity to be given to the results of the poll. No one could now
doubt that the people of Europe were ready for federation.

276 AN IDEA CONQ,U£RS THE WORLD

The argument that United Europe was desirable in principle
but impracticable on political grounds fell abruptly away.

In New York we were struck by the tremendous growth of
anti-Gommunist feeling which had taken place during the
five months since we left. Those who sympathized fanatically
with Soviet Russia only yesterday had now suddenly become
equally fanatical opponents of the Soviet regime. There was
much apprehension lest the European countries would be
destroyed in turn by the Soviets within and without and that
they would thus fall an easy prey to the anti-American camp.
It was not difficult to convince Americans that only a European
federation could prevent such a catastrophe. The bugbear of
all American thinking was a Soviet Empire stretching from the
Behring Straits to Lisbon and Dakar and threatening the
United States from east and west. Given this frame of mind, it
was easy to find strong support among Americans for the idea
of a United Europe.

Of decisive importance in this development was a speech
delivered by John Foster Dulles, on 19th January 1947, in the
big ballroom of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, New York, about
America’s interest in the unification of Europe. The effect of
this sjjecch on American thinking was comparable to that
which Churchill’s Zurich speech had within Europe. Foster
Dulles spoke with the voice of authority—not only for the
Republican party, in which he had for some years been known
as an expert on foreign policy, but also for the Administration
itself and for Congress. Before delivering it, Dulles had shown
the text of his speech to the two Republican leaders. Senators
Taft and Vandenberg, as well as to Governor Dewey. All three
had signified their wholehearted approval. Dulles thus became
the spokesman for that bipartisan foreign policy which he had
helped to initiate. He was helped by the fact that he enjoyed
the confidence not only of the two political parties, but also of
the State Department.

To mark the unanimous support which American public
opinion was giving to United Europe, I drafted—with the
help of a few American friends—^an ‘Appeal to the Citizens of

ACTION THROUGH PARLIAMENTS 277

the United States of America in Favour of the United States
of Europe This appeal was published in March 1947 and bore
the signatures of many prominent Americans, among them
politicians, authors, clergymen, Nobel Prize winners, heads
of universities, scholars, journalists and businessmen.

Among the famous men whom I asked to sign the appeal
was Senator Fulbright. Fulbright was greatly respected
throughout the United States ever since the Senate resolution
bearing his name had been adopted as the fundamental
principle of American policy towards the United Nations.
Fulbright wrote me that, whilst he was in full sympathy with
the appeal, it was his conviction that the appropriate forum for
Senators to voice their political views was the Senate itself and
not an outside platform.

I took him at his word and asked him whether he would
table in the Senate a resolution for the unification of Europe.
This suggestion he accepted at once. Together with Senator
Elbert Thomas (who had signed the appeal), Fulbright tabled
the following motion: ‘Congress approves the creation of the
United States of Europe within the framework of the United
Nations.’ A motion in identical terms was tabled in the House
of Representatives by Hale Boggs, member for Louisiana.

These resolutions had a remarkable effect. Almost the entire
body of Senators and Representatives immediately declared
themselves in their favour—a lead which public opinion
followed without hesitation. Secretary of State Marshall, too, let
it be known that he fully approved Senator Fulbright’s initiative.

Harold Ickes, Roosevelt’s former Secretary for the Interior,
wrote in the New York Post that, within his own memory, no
idea had ever been so unanimously acclaimed by the American
public. Republicans and Democrats, Internationalists and
Isolationists, Capitalists and Socialists, Reactionaries and
Progressives, outdid each other through newspaper and maga¬
zine articles, lectures and radio speeches in giving their un¬
reserved support to the project of a United Europe.

I had occasion, in connection with these resolutions, to visit
Washington in the early days of April 1947. In the train back

278 AN IDEA CONQ,UERS THE WORLD

to New York, I reflected on the long way which our movement
had travelled and in my mind tried to draw up a kind of
balance sheet. In Europe, hundreds of parliamentary repre¬
sentatives of all nations were waiting impatiently to play a
decisive part in the realization of federal Europe. Here in
America, the White House, the Administration, the State De¬
partment, both Houses of Congress and the entire public had
been won over to the idea of Pan-Europe. Suddenly I felt tears
coming to my eyes. They were tears of joy. Anxious lest I
arouse the curiosity of others in the compartment, I turned to
the window and, looking out into the open spring-like country¬
side of Pennsylvania, thanked God.

A few days later we finally wound up our New York home
and, on 26th April, left America on board the Queen Elizabeth.
Three hours after landing at Southampton I lunched with
Churchill at his London house. He was delighted to hear that
our cause had gained such strong support in the United States.
Since I last saw him, he himself had formed in Britain a central
committee representing the United Europe Movement which
was busy preparing its first mass demonstration to be held in
the Albert Hall on 14th May. To his great sorrow, he had, how¬
ever, failed to overcome the Labour Party’s resistance to the
movement.

Though, like me, Churchill would have been happy to see
our two movements merged into one, this project now appeared
more difficult than ever. For of the British Members of Parlia¬
ment who had answered my questiormaire in the affirmative,
no fewer than two-thirds were members of the Labour Party
and were anxious not to provoke a clash with their party
leaders by following a movement headed by Churchill.

Four days later I attended an informal meeting at the
House of Commons with a group of M.P.s who supported our
movement. Soon after, I had a similar conference at the Palais
du Luxembourg in Paris with members of our French parlia¬
mentary group. I was also received by President Vincent
Auriol, who was a most active supporter of United Europe.
He told me how, already at the Versailles Conference, he had

ACTION THROUGH PARLIAMENTS 279

taken up the cudgels for European federation and how he had
later supported Briand in every possible way. The time, he
felt, had now come to put this great idea into practice; he him¬
self would do everything in his power to make this possible.

I got on well with Foreign Minister Georges Bidault, a con¬
vinced European and a man of outstanding intelligence. But
when I asked him to take the initiative on an official level, he
replied that the time for this had not yet come. Meanwhile
Rene Courtin had, however, formed a French representative
committee for European unity of which Edouard Herriot be¬
came the first president.

On 18th May we visited Bordeaux at the invitation of the
university which celebrated that year its five-hundredth anni¬
versary. I had been asked to represent New York Univer¬
sity at this jubilee.

Wearing the full regalia of my university, including cap and
gown, I duly presented the message of goodwill which New
York University had addressed to the University of Bor¬
deaux. The ceremony was followed by a series of formal
banquets. One of our most enjoyable evenings was that spent
in the pillared wine-cellar of the famous Chateau Margot with
city dignitaries and representatives of nearly every univenity
in the world.

There was also an organized excursion to the Pyrenees under
the guidance of the rector himself. Professor Henri Marchaud,
and of his wife. We visited the superb Chateau de Pau, with
its memories of Henry IV—one of the forefathers of Pan-
Europe. In the mountain valleys and later in Biarritz we ad¬
mired the strange, festive folk dances of the Basque people,
indescribably beautiful in their noble and melancholy manner.

When we arrived back in Gstaad, the meadows and moun¬
tains were already decked out in their lovely spring colours:
there were narcissi and gentians and an impressive array of
other flowers. We started work at once on the preparation of
the opening session of the European Parliamentary Union
which was to be held not in Geneva, but at Gstaad, on 4th and
5th July 1947.

28 o an idea conquers the world

All present had one single object in mind: to concert the
efforts of the various parliamentary groups and thereby compel
the Governments to lose no further time in bringing about the
unification of Europe. The Greek Minister Leon Maccas was
elected chairman. I opened the Conference with the following
address:

My friends—you are most welcome in this lovely valley of the
Sarina, where the Germanic and the Latin genius join hands in a
spirit of perfect European brotherhood.

Our meeting in this heart of Europe is an Open Conspiracy—to
use a word of H. G. Wells. The aim of our conspiracy is to organize
immediately, throughout Europe, parliamentary majorities strong
enough to compel the governments to execute our programme: a
United Europe within the framework of the United Nations.

Many of your colleagues who at present are members of Govern¬
ments share thoroughly our views on Europe. They will be very
happy indeed to have your support. They will be the first to wel¬
come our parliamentary initiative—just as we are determined to
give our wholehearted support to every one of their actions aiming
at Europe’s peace, prosperity and unity. But let us never forget that it
is up to the Parliaments to constitute and to overthrow Governments;
and that, consequently, parliamentary majorities and not Govern¬
ments represent in Western Europe the original source of power.

Our recent Parliamentary enquite on the European question has
given evidence that in every Parliament of Western Europe there
are potential majorities for European Union.

You, my friends, have just taken the initiative of mobilizing and
organizing these majorities, scattered among various political parties,
by constituting parliamentary committees for European Federation.
As soon as you shall have accomplished this task, the traditional
parliamentary struggle between the parties will continue only on
problems of domestic policy—but not in the realm of foreign affairs.
There, only two fronts will face one another: the Pan-European and
the anti-European forces. Inthisdecisivebattlefor Europe’s future,you
will lead the majorities and, consequently, you are bound to triumph.

Our Conference has met to co-ordinate our forces for this impend¬
ing battle by organizing a European Parliamentary Union. And
also to prepare for the first meeting of a preliminary Parliament for
Europe on 8th September.

After twenty-five years of preparation and of propaganda, the
day of action has come; the Union of Europe hets ceased to be a
distant dream, it has become an immediate political goal.

ACTION THROUGH PARLIAMENTS 28 l

The peoples’ war must end with a peoples’ peace, the chaos of
Europe with the Union of Europe. From the horrors and destruc¬
tions of war a new Europe shall emerge, united and peaceful, free
and prosperous—without hereditary hatreds, without spheres of
influence, without divisions between victors, vanquished and neu¬
trals, without ruinous custom-barriers, without a new race of
armaments.

You, my friends, arc the legitimate representatives of the peoples
of Europe in their longing for peace and happiness. In your hands
and in those of your colleagues lies the future of Europe, of its peace
and civilization. It is up to you to start, here and now, a new page
of human history, to lead to triumph this great revolution of the
twentieth century, the glorious revolution of European brotherhood.

The Conference decided to set up a provisional committee
consisting of the representatives of ten national Parliaments
and to convene the first European Parliamentary Congress to
Gstaad from 8th to loth September, 1947.

The meeting ended wdth a press conference on the Wasseren-
grat, near Gstaad, two thousand metres above sea-level. Repre¬
sentatives and journalists arrived by chair-lift. On this splendid
mountain peak, I offered to conclude with any journalist
present the following bet: that Pan-Europe would come into
existence within two years. To my pleasant surprise, nobody
accepted this offer.

A few days later representatives of sixteen European
countries met in Paris to work out the basis of a European
economic union. The initiative for this had come from the
American Secretary of State, General Marshall, who promised
generous American assistance for European recovery plans on
condition that the recipient countries agreed beforehand on a
concerted programme of action.

The upshot of this Paris conference was the Committee for
European Economic Co-operation, a kind of economic general
staff to prepare the ground for an eventual Customs Union.
This development had to some extent been anticipated by
Holland, Belgium and Luxembourg when they created what
has become known as the Benelux Union between their three
countries. France and Italy subsequently entered into similar

282 AN IDEA CONQ,UERS THE WORLD

negotiations with a view to forming a Customs Union of the
Latin countries.

Before long, these efforts to co-ordinate economic affairs led
to the question of European political union; for it became clear
that in the long run there could not be a common market un¬
less there was readiness to defend it by common sacrifice. A
proposal for political union figured on the agenda of the first
European Parliamentary Congress, which we were now busy
preparing. Helped by a staff of competent collaborators, my
wife attended to the technical problems of the Congress, whilst
I discussed with the various national groups how to select
delegations which would represent as fully as possible the
various trends of opinion and thus give the Congress the charac¬
ter of a preliminary European Parliament.

On 8th September 1947 this European Parliament opened
in the beflagged ballroom of the Palace Hotel at Gstaad. Except
for me, every delegate was an active parliamentarian of his own
country. They had come to Gstaad from every part of Europe
—from Sweden in the north to Greece in the south—to plead
for the unification of the Continent.

Our guests of honour were a number of prominent ex-
parliamentarians, such as Duncan Sandys, Somerset de Chair,
Gr^goire Gafencu, former Foreign Minister of Roumania and
Paul de Auer, former Minister of Hungary in Paris, one of the
early pioneers of the Pan-European movement.

Among the French delegates was Premier Reynaud, Vice-
Premier Francisque Gay and Ministers Coty, de Menthon and
Pflimlin. Greetings were read from all parts of the world, among
them telegrams from Bevin, Churchill, Smuts, Sforza and
Benedetto Croce.

The leader, Georges Bohy, was elected president, L^on
Maccas, Ren^ Coty, Enzo Giacchero and Ronald Mackay
vice-presidents, whilst I myself was appointed secretary-general.
Gstaad was to be the headquarters of the Union.

During the whole Congress, there was a remarkable display
of European solidarity. Differences of opinion there were of
course—also conflicts—but these did not follow national lines.

ACTION THROUGH PARLIAMENTS 283

The understanding between the two largest delegations, the
French delegation of forty-three and the Italian delegation of
forty, was particularly cordial. On every side there was recog¬
nition of the fact that some measure of national sovereignty must
be renounced in favour of European federation.

The most valuable achievement of the Congress was its
appeal for a European Parliament to be elected by the Parlia¬
ments of member states and to act as the chief deliberative
organ of United Europe.

Two years later this appeal was to be partially fulfilled. Our
draft resolution did not call for a European Parliament with
executive powers, but only for a Consultative Assembly with
powers to draft a constitution which national Parliaments
would be free to accept or reject.

The numerous press representatives assembled in Gstaad
began at once to make propaganda for a European Parliament.
Our Congress, so they said, proved by its example that no
national conflicts stood in the way of such a federal body and
that it had as good a chance of functioning as any national
Parliament.

When the delegates returned to their national Parliaments
after the Congress they became pioneers of European Union.
Through their efforts, the various Parliaments were soon made
to serve as national headquarters of our movement. Questions
and resolutions were tabled ceaselessly so as to compel Govern¬
ments to act in the spirit of our Gstaad programme.

By the end of 1947 the leadership of the movement had for
all practical purposes passed into the hands of the parlia¬
mentarians themselves. This time, fortunately, our cause was
championed not by a group of powerless individuals but by
men and women with sufficient power and responsibility to drive
their Governments firmly in the direction of European Union.

The Governments had henceforth to accept the fact that
they were confronted by organized parliamentary majorities
demanding a policy of European unification. It was not too
much to hope, therefore, that some bold initiative would
shortly be taken at an official level.

CHAPTER XXIX

THE DAWN OF EUROPE UNITY

On 1st January 1948 we left Paris for Cherbourg. There we
boarded the Mauretania, which was to take us to New York.
Captain Woollitt very kindly invited us to sit at his table for the
entire voyage. He must have been somewhat surprised to see
me appe.’.r alone at every meal. Though the sea was absolutely
calm, Idel never left her cabin. The reason for this self-imposed
‘imprisonment’ was that we had a little private stowaway, a
Siamese cat called Ti€n.

Idel was afraid lest TiJn might have to spend the voyage
locked up in the ship’s cage. TiCn, who was delicate and much
attached to us, would have been most unhappy there. Idel
therefore decided to smuggle him on board, wrapped up in a
big muff. This turned out to be no easy job, since Siamese cats,
instead of being silent like other cats, are notoriously talkative.
For three days we successfully hid him. While our cabin was
being tidied up, Tiin remained in the bathroom; when the
steward came to clean the bathroom, Ti^n was carefully con¬
cealed in Idel’s bed. To make doubly sure, we set every available
ventilator in motion, in the hope of drowning any noises which
he might make. On the third day I spotted quite by chance a
poster requesting passengers to hand in their dogs to the ship’s
cage. There was no mention of cats. Screwing up my courage,
I saw the captain and confessed our stowaway. He laughed,
for he too was fond of cats. From now on, TiSn could amuse
himself to his heart’s content in our cabin and receive as many
visitors as he liked—and Idel was free to have her meals with
me at the captain’s table.

Back in New York, we were assailed by a host of photo¬
graphers and reporters. They wanted to know how Europe was
progressing towards federation. We replied in fairly optimistic
terms. Asked to explain the purpose of our visit, I said: ‘To
co-ordinate the unification of Europe with the Marshall Plan.’

THE DAWN OF EUROPE UNITY 285

In Washington I handed a memorandum which I had com¬
posed to leading officials at the State Department and to
several members of Congress. Its title was ‘How Europe can
be saved by the Marshall Plan’. I argued that Europe required
not only material but also moral assistance, not only dollars
but also unity; that without some form of European Union,
American dollars would be squandered, since money alone can
prevent neither a third world war nor the total destruction of
Europe which would follow such a war. America, the memor¬
andum went on, had a vital interest in European integration;
the Marshall Plan can be made the instrument of a policy of
integration. For, once European Governments realize that
America’s readiness to continue with Marshall Aid depends
on their own readiness to unify, the pace of unification will be
considerably accelerated.

My suggestions fell on fertile ground. The preamble of the
European Co-operation Act, as drafted by John Foster Dulles,
brought out very clearly the relationship between European
integration and American aid. Speeches by leading Senators
helped further to convince the Governments of Europe that,
whilst America was ready to assist a unified Europe, she would
never help a divided one.

I discussed these aspects fully with President Truman and
with Secretary Marshall. I found Truman’s direct and un¬
pretentious manner very stimulating. The warmth of his recep¬
tion is free from all those symptoms of Spanish Court protocol
that still survive so frequently in Europe. No one would for a
moment suspect that, next to Stalin, this man is the most power¬
ful personality in the world. His fabulous rise to power has robbed
him neither of his modesty nor of his sound common sense.

Marshall is less typically American than Truman. He has
much in him of the European intellectual. By his personality
he conveys the impression of a thinker rather than of a soldier
or diplomat; dignified, serious and thorough, he inspires respect
and confidence. The man whose overall strategical plan won the
greatest campaign in history, is, like all really great men,
modest, human and simple.

286 AN IDEA CON(iUERS THE WORLD

I also had many talks on European problems with the
leading officials of the State Department: with Charles A.
Bohlen, the official adviser of the Secretary of State; with
George Kennan, the head of the department of long-term
political planning; and with John D. Hickerson, the head of
the European Department. They were all pleased to hear about
the rapid progress of our movement and declared themselves
ready to support it in every possible way—subject only to their
profound dislike of any policy which might create the impres¬
sion that American federal ideas were being forced on European
countries.

Bevin’s initiative, which led in March 1948 to the foundation
of a Western European Union, was applauded by the American
press and the American public with joy and approval. Every¬
one saw in the Union the first step towards complete federation.

We were still in America when Churchill convened the
Hague Congress of the European Movement for 7th May
1948. This Congress was to be a gigantic rally of all unofficial
forces and personalities in Europe who strove for the unifica¬
tion of the Continent. Its chief sponsors were the British and
French Committees of the European Movement, the European
Union of Federalists (Henri Brugmans), the Nouvelles Equipes
Internationales (Robert Bichet) and the European League of
Economic Co-operation (van Zeeland), all of them bodies
formed since the end of the war for the promotion of European
unity. At Churchill’s invitation, the European Parliamentary
Union agreed to participate in the preparation of the Hague
Congress. We for our part urged all our national groups to be
represented by as many delegates as possible.

Before returning to Europe, I constituted on 19th April the
American Committee for a Free and United Europe. It was
made up of a number of leading personalities in the United
States. Its objective was to keep alive the idea of the United
States of Europe and to pursue the work which I myself had
tried to do in the past few years. William Bullitt gave consider¬
able assistance in the formation of this committee and accepted
its vice-chairmanship. Senator Fulbright became chairman;

THE DAWN OF EUROPE UNITY 287

the Other founding members of this committee were: Bishop
Carl Alter, Hale Boggs, Harry Woodbum Chase, Richard S.
Childs, John W. Davis, William J. Donovan, Stephen Duggan,
Allen Dulles, James A. Farley, Clayton Fritchey, Robert J.
Gannon, Frederick W. Gehle, Harry D. Gideonse, William
Green, Christian A. Herter, Herbert Hoover, Hans V. Kalten-
bom, John Y. Keur, Robert M. La Follette, Jr., Joseph J.
Larkin, Alice Longworth Roosevelt, Clare Boothe Luce,
Robert Moses, Robert P. Patterson, Philip D. Reed, George
N. Shuster, Norman Thomas, Dorothy Thompson, George E.
Warren, Thomas Watson and Arnold J. Zurchcr.

After all the hectic bustle of New York and Washington,
our cabin on the Queen Elizabeth seemed like a sanatorium. Ti6n
was now a recognized passenger and Idel was no longer confined
to our cabin on his account. Those few days of rest and com¬
plete relaxation on the high seas were always a most agreeable
break in our routine and I have wonderful memories of them.

We landed at Cherbourg on 4th May. Two days later we
found ourselves in the festive atmosphere of The Hague. In a
sense, the whole Congress revolved round the outstanding
personality of Winston Churchill. Among the delegates we
met many old fi-iends and collaborators of pre-war days. It
was as if all the supporters of Pan-Europe had agreed to meet
here and celebrate their sixth Congress. From all sides there
were congratulations on the astonishing progress of our project.
There were many familiar faces which we remembered from
the Gstaad Congress; more than two hundred parliamentarians
had come to The Hague, among them several Germans.

After Churchill had opened the Congress with a magnificent
speech, the chairman, Paul Ramadier, indicated that it was
now my turn to address the Assembly:

We arc proud and happy to greet in our midst our president of
honour, the greatest statesman of our age, the man who has thrust
the glory of hb immortal name into the balance for a United
Europe: Winston Churchill!

His name means victory: yesterday, victory over Hitler’s tyranny;
today, victory for a United States of Europe!

288 AN IDEA CONQ,UERS THE WORLD

Our Congress, my friends, marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of
the Pan-European movement. Twenty-five years of struggle for
Europe, its peace and its liberty is little in the course of history but
it is much in a human generation.

While we are here discussing a United Europe, our unhappy
continent is cruelly split in two by the Iron Curtain.

To content ourselves with the union of free Europe while sacrific¬
ing our brothers and sisters behind the Iron Curtain would mean to
betray the great idea we are standing for.

While organizing the Union of the Free, let us prepare for the
great day, when the Iron Curtain will be raised and all of Europe
united, from the shores of the Atlantic to the borders of the Soviets.

I hope that our Congress will serve not only the cause of European
Union, but ako that of European reconciliation.

For Europe cannot live while its hatreds persist.

The peoples of Europe have suffered enough; they have hated
more than enough. Time has come to end these sufferings and these
hatreds. Time has come for reconciliation and reconstruction.

Hitler has been crushed, but his evil spirit has survived. Europe
needs a thorough re-education and denazification. We must reject
the barbaric and totalitarian notion of collective guilt and collective
punishment. We all must learn more tolerance, more generosity,
more mercy.

If Europe is to rise again, we must base its future upon the two
noblest foundations of its past; on Greek individualism and Christian
socialism; on the dignity of the human person, and on generous
help for those in need.

Let us never forget, my friends, that European Union is a means
and no end.

After all. Hitler has also tried to create a United Europe and
Stalin is striving toward a similar goal.

The basic difference between them and ourselves is that we are
aiming at a free and at a human Europe.

We wish to unite Europe not for the benefit of a single race or of a
single class, but for the benefit of all its men, women and children.

We wish to unite Europe to assure permanent peace between its
peoples and to prevent the horrors of a war of total destruction.

We wish to unite Europe, to raise, by means of a continental
market and a stable currency, the standard of living of millions of
Europeans from their present state of utter mkery.

We wish to unite Europe, to protect every single European man
and woman against murder and deportation by secret police,
against torture and concentration camps.

THE DAWN OF EUROPE UNITY 289

These are the reasons why Europe has to unite. This is the goal
toward which we are striving.

If, therefore, in the course of our deliberations we are in doubt
how to decide, let us think in terms of people, rather than of govern¬
ments. Let us think rather of the powerless than of those in power;
rather of the poor than of the rich; rather of those who are imhappy
than of those who are happy!

Let us always keep in mind that we are here on this strange planet,
not to conquer empires nor to grab fortunes, but to help one another
to carry the heavy burden of living.

In this spirit, my friends, I salute the Congress of Europe.

I then read the following message from Senator Fulbright
and our American Committee to the Congress:

My dear Count Coudenhove-Kalergi;

As President of the American Committee for a Free and United
Europe, I send to you and the members of the Conference an
expression of the hopes of the Committee and, I am sure, of the
American people, that your meeting will be successful.

The American Committee is, I believe, truly representative of
the American people and is positive evidence of their genuine in¬
terest in the creation of a united, peaceful and prosperous Europe.

We do not wish to force our ideas upon any country, but it is felt
in America that we have a legitimate interest in the recreation of a
strong and peaceful Europe. We have, I am sure, consideration for
the independence and self-respect of Europeans, but as their partners
in undertaking to preserve in the world an opportunity for men to
be free, we wish to encourage in every possible way the political
unification of Europe.

The European peoples must themselves voluntarily bring about
their unification in their own way and in a manner consistent with
their history and culture. We recognize that a forced unification
by any non-European power will be neither satisfactory nor lasting.
Without unity, however, we are unable to see how prosperity or
peace among your people can be re-established and maintained.

The one way that the people of Europe can repay the American
people for their sacrifices in two wars and in the European Recovery
Programme is to overcome their ancient nationalism, recognize the
identity of their interests and create a living, vital European com¬
munity, able once more, as they have in the past, to contribute
to the forward march of Western Chrbtian civilization.

May God be with you in your efforts!

290 AN IDEA CONQUERS THE WORLD

After a debate lasting three days, the Hague Congress
adopted in its resolutions the main proposal which we had
previously drafted at Gstaad: the formation of a European
Parliament elected by all the national Parliaments taking
part.

Now that the people of Europe and their parliamentary
representatives had expressed themselves so clearly in favour
of European Union, the Governments could no longer remain
silent. On 20th July 1948, at the Hague Meeting of the five
Foreign Ministers of the Brussels Treaty Powers, Georges
Bidault surprised his colleagues and the world with hb unex¬
pected proposal to take the initiative for a European Union
and a European Assembly elected by its member Parliaments.

One week later, on 28th July, the Foreign Policy Committee
of the French National Assembly adopted a resolution tabled
by Francois de Menthon, calling for the formation of a
European Assembly in the spirit of the decisions taken at
Gstaad and at The Hague. De Menthon as well as Eduard
Bonnefous, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, had
been delegates at the Gstaad meeting. On the basis of thb reso¬
lution, which was accepted by twenty-one votes to six—with one
abstention—the French Government headed by Andre Marie
decided on i8th August to incorporate the project of a European
Union and a European Assembly in the official foreign policy of
France, and to invite the other members of the Brussels Treaty
Organization to co-operate to this end. The initiative for this
historic decision came from Bidault’s successor, the new Foreign
Minister—Robert Schuman, and from the Minbter of Defence
—Paul Ramadier.

The Belgian Government, under its Prime Minbter, Paul-
Henri Spaak, at once accepted the French proposal.

A few days later hundreds of parliamentarians and journa¬
lists arrived at Interlaken, and on ist September the second Con¬
gress of the European Parliamentary Union was formally
opened. There was much rejoicing and pride at the
rapid progress which the movement had made since the
Gstaad Congress. The Franco-Belgian initiative had at last

THE DAWN OF EUROPE UNITY 29I

moved the project into the realm of reality and no one had
any doubts now as to its ultimate accomplishment.

Western Germany was represented by the President of its
Parliamentary Council, Dr. Konrad Adenauer, who had been
a pioneer of Pan-Europe ever since the days of Stresemann.

There were also two guests of honour from America, repre¬
senting our European Committee: Ambassador Bullitt and
Congressman Hale Boggs.

The Congress was unanimously of the opinion that, as a
result of the Franco-Belgian initiative, the Gstaad and Hague
resolutions were now assured of a successful outcome. Hence
our interest and our discussions centred on a new and vital
question; should Europe be organized as a Union of sovereign
states—or on the federal principle?

The Congress decided in favour of a federal state. The
so-called Interlaken Plan was accepted unanimously—with
only one abstention.

The Interlaken Plan provides for a European Parliament, a
Federal Executive and a Supreme Court, following the main
outlines of the Federal Constitution of Switzerland. It demands
clearly that basic elements of national sovereignty be trans¬
ferred to organs of the federation in matters of foreign aHairs,
defence, economy and for the protection of human rights.

This Interlaken Plan was subsequently signed by more
than five hundred members of European Parliaments. Among
these signatories figure many members of governments, such
as the Frenchmen Bidault and Guy Mollet, the Germans
Adenauer and Lehr, and the Italians Sforza and Saragat.

After all the excitements of the Congress and of our American
journey, we were glad to resume our normal routine in the
peaceful atmosphere of Gstaad.

At the time of year when fog descends over the lowlands and
the weather generally takes a turn for the worse, the Bernese
Oberland basks daily in a clear autumn sun. At that period
the Saanenland lies well above fog and cloud. The air is
crystal-clear and the landscape looks timeless—as if time had
stood still altogether. The visitors from the cities have returned

202 AN IDEA CONQ,UERS THE WORLD

home and the herds of cattle are on their way down from
their summer pastures. Day and night one hears the clanging
of their bells, as if they were mobile cathedrals roaming the
fields. Forests are full of mushrooms of all kinds. We used to
pick them for hours and return home, our baiskets full to over¬
flowing. At the end of the mushroom season, there was generally
a second spring, a kind of mountain spring, in the late autumn.
Gentians, dark-blue trunks and light-blue stars, blossomed a
second time and there was a mass of cowslips and hare-bells. I
remember that in 1948 we found gentians on the upper slopes
as late as 12th December.

Shortly after the Interlaken Congress I wrote a pamphlet
for New York University, entitled Europe Seeks Unity.'^

Meanwhile the Franco-Belgian initiative for the unification
of Europe proceeded apace. On 28th October 1948 a confer¬
ence of the five Foreign Minbters took place in Paris and it
was decided to set up a Study Group for European Union.

The chairmanship of this Study Group fell to Edouard
Herriot, who invited me, together with a delegation represent¬
ing the European Parliamentary Union, to submit our plans
and proposals to his Study Group on 8th December.

The proceedings of the Group showed at once how deep was
the cleavage of views between France and Britain. France,
like most other continental nations, wanted a radical solution
of the European problem. The French realized only too well
that collaboration with Germany, on a basis of equality, would
only be possible within the frame of a European federation.

Britain saw the problem in a different light. Her obligations
towards the Dominions made it impossible for her to tie herself
too closely to the Continent. There was also a psychological
factor of some importance. Britain has no written constitu¬
tion either for the home country or for the Commonwealth.
Public opinion was therefore deeply opposed to any conti¬
nental attachment on the basis of a written constitution;
nor, for the same reason, was there much enthusiasm for the

‘ Europe Seeks Unity, by R. Coudenhove-Kalergi, with an introduction by William
C. Bullitt, New York Univeraity, N.Y.

THE DAWN OF EUROPE UNITY 293

prospect of having to obey laws decreed by a continental
majority against the British vote. Britain was therefore opposed
to a federal state, though she was prepared to join an alliance
of Sovereign nations.

To prevent the setting up of a Constituent Assembly and
the drafting of a constitution, the British members of the
Study Group, led by Hugh Dalton, a member of His Majesty’s
Government, voted for the creation of a European Council
nominated by and dependent on the member Governments
themselves. The French, on the other hand, in conformity
with the decisions taken at Gstaad and The Hague, insisted on
a European Parliament elected by the national legislatures.

These negotiations were kept secret. But in spite of this
secrecy rumours spread that no compromise was achieved.
Finally the Committee of Experts declared frankly that the
negotiations had broken down.

This critical stage of the Pan-European negotiations caused
us to change our plans for the winter months. It was clear that
our presence would now be more urgently required in Europ>e
than in America. We therefore cancelled the steamer passages
to New York which we had already reserved for 25th January.

This gave us the opportunity of spending the first winter
of our lives in Gstaad—and of learning the secret which every
winter lures thousands of holiday-makers from all over the
world into this isolated valley of the Bernese Oberland. In its
colouring, the winter landscape around Gstaad resembles the
national flag of Bavaria: half white and half blue, the white
very pure and the blue deep and beautiful. So warm was the
sun that reached us through the clear winter air that we spent
many hours each day sitting out of doon—admiring the
beautiful view of mountain peaks, gentle slopes and valleys, all
covered with a layer of soft snow.

I was able at last to give some time to the reorganization of
the Pan-European Union which I had in recent years tended
to neglect in favour of its two post-war successors; the European
Parliamentary Union and the American Committee for a
Free and United Europe.

294 an idea conq,uers the world

Hitler had succeeded in destroying almost every one of our
national groups. The Swiss branch alone had survived the
war and I decided to rebuild the Union around it. With¬
out the generous assistance of old and new friends in Switzer¬
land we would have been hard put to raise the necessary funds
for our two congresses at Gstaad and Interlaken.

Since the Committee of Experts had been unable to find a
solution, the five Foreign Ministers took up personally the
question of European Union. In the last days of January they
met in London to see if a compromise between their views
were possible.

On 28th January we heard the wonderful news through
Radio Luxemburg: the five Governments of Western Europe
had reached agreement! They would set up a Council of
Europe and invite all other free states of Europe to take part
in negotiations for its establishment.

This Council of Europe was to have two organs: a Com¬
mittee of Ministers and a Consultative Assembly. The Com¬
mittee was to consist of representatives of the member Govern¬
ments. As for the Consultative Assembly, members were to be
free to select their representative by any methods they chose.
France declared her intention of having them elected by
Parliament, whilst Britain preferred to let them be nominated
by the Cabinet.

Finally, the London Conference chose Strasbourg as the
seat of the Council and Assembly.

This historic event marked the end of a long struggle:
at last the nations of Europe have created an organ designed
to achieve their integration. Having been divided by wars
for more than ten centuries, they are now resolved to close
their ranks.

This was indeed a triumph for Pan-Europe!

CHAPTER XXX

VICTORY

On 5th May 1949, representatives of ten Governments
attended in London the ceremonial signing of the Statute of
Europe.

Six days later we visited the new capital of Europe, Stras¬
bourg. We were most cordially received by the Prefect, Rene
Paira and the other authorities. The Mayor of Strasbourg,
Charles Frey, kindly placed at our disposal for our next
Conference, the beautiful rooms of the City Hall, which some
weeks later became the headquarters of the Committee of the
Ministers of the European CouncU.

Our meeting of the Council of the European Parliamentary
Union was held on and and 3rd July. It was the first inter¬
national meeting of importance in this new centre of European
life. Among the German delegates was Konrad Adenauer,
accompanied by hb faithful advber, Herbert Blankenhom.
The Strasbourg Communists wanted to prevent our meeting.
They dbtributed leaflets, calling their comrades to protest
against Adenauer and against the presence of German dele¬
gates at Strasbourg.

On 8th August the Committee of Ministers started the first
Session of the Council of Europe.

I was happy to have a talk with my old friend Carlo Sforza,
who had remained young in hb unflinching belief in a United
Europe. He did all he could to move the conservative and
reluctant Committee of Minbters towards a broader concep¬
tion of close European co-operation.

Robert Schuman helped him in this effort. I always like to
talk with this genuine European, partly educated in France
and partly in Germany, who has been a tool of Providence
for bringing about the reconciliation of these two great nations.
Free from vanity and ambition, he serves the cause of France,
of Europe and of peace with admirable patience and idealbm.

296 AN IDEA CON(iUERS THE WORLD

Highly respected by all who have ever approached him, he is
a remarkable and rare example of an almost religious con¬
ception of political duties.

When I met Norway’s Foreign Minister, Halvard Lange, I
was struck by his resemblance to his father, Christian Lange,
who had been my partner and companion during my first
lecture-tour in the United States. I also renewed my old
relations with Paul-Henri Spaak. I had met him last in New
York during the war. Meanwhile he had become one of the
leading pioneers of a united Europe.

Two days later, on loth August, the Parliament of Europe
opened its first session. This memorable day was really the
birthday of Pan-Europe.

Since the Holy Alliance, Europe had seen many Committees
and Conferences of its Foreign Ministers—but never anything
like this new Assembly that represented the peoples of Europe.
This Parliament of Europe, that seemed a Utopian dream only
two years earlier, when it was demanded by our Gstaad Con¬
gress, had now become a political reality.

This Assembly representing twelve European nations
assembled in the huge hall of the Strasbourg University, beauti¬
fully decorated with French tapestries for this great occasion.
This improvised frame gave to the Assembly rather the
character of a congress than of a parliament. My wife and I
had every reason to feel this way, since many of the delegates
had been our guests at Gstaad and at Interlaken.

My wife and I were sitting in the diplomatic gallery, beside
Madame Paris, wife of the brilliant Secretary General of the
Council of Europe, Camille Paris and daughter of the great
European, Paul Claudel: she was as happy as we to see this
Assembly emerge as a living symbol of European unity.

Edouard Herriot opened the Assembly. I remembered our
joint efforts in the ’twenties to prevent the Second World War
by uniting Europe, and their tragic failure.

Really, this Assembly was for us a gathering of friends. Idel,
who had so much work and trouble with our parliamentary
congresses, now enjoyed being a guest of this official congress,

VICTORY

297

without any duties and responsibilities for its organization.
Our two parliamentary congresses had been like dress rehearsals
for this Strasbourg Assembly. At Gstaad and Interlaken many
of the delegates had met and become friends. They had not
only freely discussed the European question, but also shared
bread and wine and jokes and cast off their mutual distrust.

For Idel and me this loth of August 1949 was a grand day.
When a friend asked me how I felt, I replied: ‘ Were I dead,
everybody would now say: “What a pity that Goudenhove
did not live to see this day! How happy he would have been to
see his dream come true!” Thanks to God, I am still alive and
very happy! ’ From all parts of the world letters and telegrams
of congratulation came. We appreciated greatly a little note
from Duncan Sandys, now chairman of the European Move¬
ment:

My dear Richard,

I am writing to tell you how much I am rejoicing with you on
this great day of the opening of the first session of the Council of
Europe. Those of us who have joined your crusade in its later stages
pay our tribute to its founder and leader.

I know I am speaking not only in my own name but in that of
all my colleagues in the European Movement when I say that
Europe today owes you a great debt of gratitude for all your faith
and inspiration in the past and will continue as much as ever to
need your vision and leadership in the future.

With kindest regards to you and your wife to whom our cause
owes also so much.

Yours ever,

Duncan.

I remembered a curious incident that had occurred during
the early ’thirdes. A friend of mine, Robert H. Stehli, asked
during a public performance at Zurich the noted clairvoyant,
Kordon Veri, when Pan-Europe would come into being. ‘In
1949’ was his prompt reply! Since I believe in prophecies, I
was rather disappointed and said: ‘If he is right, then Pan-
Europe will come too late and is no longer of interest to me! ’
Now Pan-Europe came, exactly as had been predicted; it came
late—but not too late.

298 AN IDEA CON(^UERS THE WORLD

I went almost every day to the university to follow the debates
of the Assembly. Their level was high. The delegates acted as
Europeans rather than as representatives of rival nations.

On the other hand, it soon became evident that no genuine
federation would emerge from the Council of Europe. Neither
was there the necessary two-third majority for federalism within
the Assembly, nor could it be expected that the Committee
of Ministers would ever agree to any such programme. For
Britain, Ireland and the Scandinavian states were not prepared
to sacrifice vital elements of their national sovereignty. They
were willing to co-operate sincerely within a European Union
of sovereign states but sternly opposed to any federal govern¬
ment or federal constitution.

Thus the Council of Europe was bound to follow the pattern
of the Pan-American Union rather than that of the United
States or of the Swiss Confederation.

To carry on the idea of a United States of Europe it was
necessary to organize the federalist forces within the Assembly.
We invited for this purpose every Wednesday evening to an
informal meeting at our headquarters, the Hotel de la Maison
Rouge, the members of the European Parliamentary Union,
and were glad to see among our numerous guests the former
Premiers, Paul Reynaud, Bidault and Parri, and the Vice-
Presidents of the Consultative Assembly, de Menthon and Jacini.

This organization of the federalist wing of the Assembly took
a definite shape in 1950 with the creation of the Constitutional
Committee for a United States of Europe, set up to draft a federal
constitution for those states which would be ready to adopt it,
and to submit it to their respective parliaments.

The success of Strasbourg also affected American opinion.
Among the American visitors who came was General William
Donovan, who had become the successor of Senator Fulbright
as chairman of The American Committee for a Free and United
Europe that now was called American Committee for a United
Europe.

Two weeks after this memorable session of the Strasbourg
Assembly, on 19th September, the European Parliamentary

VICTORY

299

Union opened its third Congress in Venice in the beautiful
hall, decorated with frescoes by Tintoretto, at the Palace of
the Doges.

This Congress was brilliantly organized by Senator Celeste
Bastianctto of Venice and my wife, who as usual was greatly
assisted in her work by our daughter Erica. Bohy presided.
From Rome the President of the National Assembly, Gronchi,
and the Vice-President of the Senate, Alberti, had come to
greet our Congress.

My opening address began as follows;

Friends,

We may be proud and gratified, for we are celebrating a decisive
victory in this most beautiful city of our great community.

Only two years ago our Congress of Gstaad launched the idea of
a European Parliament to be elected by national Parliaments; now
this idea has been realized.

In 1947 it still appeared utopian. In 1948, with the support of
many parliamentary resolutions, it was adopted first by the Congress
of The Hague and then by the French and Belgian Governments.
Finally, in 1949, it came into being in the form of the European
Parliament of Strasbourg. . . .

There are close ties between our Union and the Strasbourg Parlia¬
ment: one quarter of its members are veterans of our two Congresses
of Gstaad and Interlaken—and the members of our Union form a
solid majority within that Parliament.

This victory of the European Parliamentary Union within such a
short lapse of time as two years is no miracle. It is explained by the
fact that throughout free Europe the supreme key of power is in
the hands of members of Parliaments. We have been guided by this
fact, in the conviction that Europe would be united not by vic¬
torious armies, or revolutionary masses, or Governments jealous
of their national independence—but by the united force of members
of Parliament. As soon as majorities pronounced in favour of the
Union within your own Parliaments the game was won: the rest
was but a matter of procedure.

All delegates were staying at the splendid hotels of the island
of the Lido, opposite Venice. The time for debates was limited,
since we all had to cross the sea to reach the Palace of the Doges;
here a strict rule forbids the installation of lighting in the

300 AN IDEA CONQ,UERS THE WORLD

historic halls. Thus, every evening, dusk put an early end to
our discussions and gave us a great opportunity to enjoy the
incomparable beauties of the city; to glide about in gondolas
through narrow waters, and to visit the ancient palaces whose
hosts received us with traditional hospitality. One evening was
spent at the famous Theatre Fenice, where the great French
actor, Jean-Louis Barrault, gave a special performance, another
at a brilliant banquet at the Excelsior Lido Palace, offered to
the Congress by the Venetian Committee of Reception, headed
by Signor Pasquato. The Patriarch of Venice, Monsignore
Agostino, celebrated a High Mass at the famous San Marco
for the success of the Congress and extended his blessing upon
our work. All of Venice was decorated with Pan-European
flags. These blue flags with the red cross on the golden sun
matched wonderfully the picturesque scenery of the Piazza
San Marco and the Canale Grande.

After three days of work and of pleasure, the Congress closed
with a garden party at the famous Palazzo Vendramin Calergi,
that unites our name with the grand history of Venice.

While we were holding our meeting in Venice, the first
Parliament of Western Germany began its work by electing
my old friend Adenauer federal chancellor. Thus it was easy
to organize a German section of the European Parliamentary
Union, headed by Heinrich von Brentano, the brilliant Chair¬
man of Adenauer’s party in the Bundestag.

In Paris there still was a strong feeling against Germany’s
admission to the Council of Europe; and since Germany had
not recovered its sovereignty and therefore was not admitted
to the Committee of Ministers, many Germans were opposed
to becoming members of an organization that barred them from
full equality.

I therefore took the initiative of inviting representatives of
both Parliaments to meet on neutral ground and to discuss the
issue. The German group of the European Parliamentary
Union agreed immediately. The French hesitated. We went to
Paris to obtain its agreement.

In Paris I paid a visit to General de Gaulle, with whom I

VICTORY

301

had been in correspondence ever since our first meeting at New
York. I was again fascinated by this grand personality, now
standing between a great past and an uncertain future. De
Gaulle faces politics not like a business-man, nor as an adven¬
turer; not like a fanatic or a philosopher; neither like a gambler
nor a prophet; but as a historian of action. He draws no dividing
line between politics and history. He is not attracted by power,
but by glory. He voluntarily cast away power when he might
have become a dictator. He would be ready to share the tragic
but glorious fate of Jeanne d’Arc, rather than spend a comfort¬
able life as an average President of the French Republic. His
manners are rather those of a legitimate king than of a dictator:
simple, polite and by no means theatrical.

Almost all modern dictators are or were of short stature.
Their physical inferiority created, when they were still boys, an
inferiority complex. They dreamed of becoming one day
stronger than their taller and stronger companions who bullied
them. Their early dream of power and revenge led them to
dictatorship.

De Gaulle is tall and free from inferiority complexes. Were
he a head smaller, he might have dreamed after the Liberation
of becoming another Napoleon. Instead, he is now a private
citizen, waiting for a new call of destiny.

De Gaulle had just read the German version of my life-story
that I had sent him. He liked the book, but wondered why I had
published my memoirs while still young and in the midst of my
campaign. I explained to him that my book was an attempt to
spread my ideas without boring my readers by presenting them
in a dry political volume. I could not know if I still had time
to postpone my book, and could always complete it by a new
chapter or volume. Then I asked him if he had written his
memoirs. ‘Of course I have put on paper some notes,’ was his
answer, ‘ but I cannot publish them. For either my story would
not be true, and consequently it would be worthless, or if I
were to tell the whole truth, I would offend too many people.’

We discussed the European question and found a wide
field of agreement. De Gaulle, a nationalist by sentiment and

302 AN IDEA CONQUERS THE WORLD

tradition, is far too broadminded to overlook the fact that
isolated France, between Russia and America, has no future.
Only her European mission can restore her ancient greatness,
but this mission demands a sincere reconciliation between
France and Germany.

I had also had a good talk with Andre Malraux, one of De
Gaulle’s closest advisors. I had met him years before when he
still was a Communist. Now he has cast in his lot with de
Gaulle’s. Like Lord Byron, Malraux is a rare combination of a
dreamer and a hero. His brain is one of the best and finest in
the world and de Gaulle was lucky to gain his support. Of
course we were in entire agreement upon the European issue,
since Malraux has remained a genuine cosmopolitan.

The new year 1950 began with our Franco-German Parlia¬
mentary Conference at Basle, on 6th January. On both sides,
all political parties, with the exception of the Communists,
were represented among the sixty-five members of the Bonn
and the Paris Parliaments. Full agreement was reached on
Germany’s participation in the Council of Europe and other
issues. The Conference decided to meet soon again. This second
meeting was held in June, at Rheinfelden, a charming little
Swiss town near Basle. We were glad to see once more our dear
old friend, Paul Loebe, who had been Pan-European from
the very start and who had remained all his life faithful to
Europe. He who had been honorary chairman at the first
European Congress in 1926 in Vienna was now again elected
honorary chairman of the Conference, together with Fran-
cisque Gay, the French Catholic leader, one of the pioneers of
our European Parliamentary Congress at Gstaad.

Both Franco-German meetings were most successful. The
atmosphere was cordial. French and Germans agreed upon the
necessity of setting up a genuine federation under a federal
government and constitution and of limiting the sovereign
rights of both nations.

This Franco-German understanding made it possible to
choose a German town under French occupation, Constance,
as the meeting-place for our fourth Parliamentary Congress,

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303

held in September 1950, under the honorary chairmanship
of Adenauer, Bidault, de Gasperi, Loebe, Paul Reynard,
Sforza and Spaak. This Congress was a new highlight of
European reconciliation and solidarity.

On and February 1950 we again sailed for New York. At
Washington, Bullitt invited me together with Paul G. Hoffmann,
head of the Marshall Plan Organization.

I was delighted to meet the great American who has done
so much to help Europe rise and unite. We entirely agreed
upon the European question, and I only regretted that his
power was limited to economic issues. Two weeks later I had
a second very pleasant talk with him, and also with his
collaborator Averell Harriman and William C. Foster, his
successor.

Expressing his deep sympathy with our movement, Paul
G. Hoffman sent me some months later the following message
at the occasion of our Constance Congress:

On the occasion of your meeting I wish to send greetings and every
good wish for the success of your deliberations. The realization of the
objective you seek, a united Europe, is essential to the economic
health and security of the free world, indeed to its very survival.
The aims of the Marshall Plan run parallel to yours on this vital
issue. The sweep of world events has caught up with your inspired
vision and now more than ever free men everywhere recognize
the urgent and inescapable necessity of working together and fight¬
ing together in building one world of freedom. I share with others
who have been aware of its perseverance over the years the greatest
admiration for your pioneering effort to achieve the goal toward
which all men of goodwill aspire. We in the Economic Co-operation
Administration feel that the European Payments Union will be
potent factor in the integration of the economies of the European
nations and that it will contribute importantly in every other sphere.
This establishment of a Eiu-opean Payments Union we believe
represents a great forward stride toward achieving the kind of
economic unity which is the prologue necessary to unity in other
fields to-day. Unity in purpose and in deed is the insignia of free¬
dom.

In March I received in New York a letter from the Mayor
of Aachen (Aix-la-Chapelle), Dr. Maas. It informed me that

304 an idea conq,uers the world

the City of Aachen, one-time capital of Charlemagne’s Euro¬
pean Empire, had decided to resume its great tradition by
founding a Charlemagne Prize, consisting of a gold medal
and a money award. Every year this prize would be conferred
upon the person who had done most for uniting Europe.
The jury—composed of Aachen’s most prominent citizens,
unanimously decided to confer the first Charlemagne Prize
upon me, and invited me now to come to Aachen to receive
it on 18th May, Ascension Day.

Back in Europe, we prepared for this pleasant trip to
Aachen. Just before we started from Gstaad, good news came
from Paris: the Foreign Minister Schuman had taken the
initiative of pooling Europe’s coal and steel production; he
declared frankly that he considered this measure as the first
step towards a United States of Europe and a solid ground for
Franco-German reconciliation and co-operation.

Now that Pan-Europe had been organized at Strasbourg,
a new goal appeared to the European continent: a genuine
federation, embracing the nations that eleven centuries before
had been united within the huge Empire of Charlemagne;
this King of France, Germanic hero and Roman Emperor.

Coming from Belgium, we crossed the German border, for
the first time since February 1933, near Aachen. As we were
guests of the City of Aachen, our apartment had been reserved
at the Hotel Quellenhof. There we had stayed more than
twenty years before, during a lecture tour through Germany.
At that time the Quellenhof had been one of Europe’s most
beautiful hotels. Now it was almost a ruin. Still, the wing
with our apartment had been restored and was as neat and
clean as any first-class hotel in Europe or America. Mean¬
while one room after another, one wing after another were
being reconstructed rapidly, carefully, and methodically; and
nobody doubts that the hotel will soon regain its former
splendour.

This story of the Quellenhof is but a symbol of what is
going on in Aachen and throughout Germany. Heaps of
ruins are rising to new and modem cities. You can see with

VICTORY

305

your own eyes that human will is harder than stone, and that,
transcending all tragedies, the spirit of a nation is the decisive
force in history.

Our apartment was crowded with lilies of the valley, and
so were the hall and dining-room of the hotel. For our charm¬
ing hosts had discovered from my book that this was Idel’s
favourite flower.

On 18th May the Charlemagne ceremony started with a
High Mass in the cathedral of the great emperor. Here his
remains are still preserved in a beautiful golden shrine—and
the throne on which he attended Mass had remained un¬
changed. During the Mass celebrated by the dean of the
cathedral, the latter gave a touching address, blessing my
work for Pan-Europe. The famous choir of the cathedral
accompanied the Mass with their angelic voices.

From the cathedral we drove to the Palace of the Emperors.
Its great hall had witnessed the coronation of thirty-four
Emperors of the Holy Roman Empire; it has been badly
damaged by the war. Now it was opened, for the first time
since its reconstruction, to the public. Only half restored,
its walls were covered with branches of fir trees to hide its
wounds; thus, it gave the impression almost of a grove. This
curious blend of ancient splendour, of destruction and recon¬
struction was most impressive, as a symbol of Europe. On
one of the huge pillars of the hall we saw an old coat-of-arms
of the Aachen Chapter embodying united Europe: one half
with the German eagle, the other with the French fleur-de-lys.

When we entered the Coronation Hall a charming little
girl presented Idel with a bouquet of beautiful red roses. Its
ribbon was black and yellow—the imperial colours of Aachen
and also of the old imperial colours of prewar Austria, recall¬
ing the days of our childhood.

Then the Mayor, Dr. Maas, made a most impressive speech,
recalling the long story of the Pan-European Movement. He
quoted many of my old predictions that unfortunately had
come true.

Stepping down from the rostrum, he then conferred upon

3 o6 an idea conq,uers the world
me, to the enthusiastic cheers of the audience, the first Gharle*
magne Prize; a huge golden medal, with the ancient seal of
Aachen, representing Charlemagne on one side and a very
flattering inscription on the other.

Then Dr. Wildermuth, member of the German Federal
Government, extended the official greetings of the Bonn
Government, while the Minister of Rhineland-Westphalia,
Dr. Weitz, joined in with wishes for the final success of my
work.

From Chancellor Adenauer the following telegram was read:

On your being honoured with the Charlemagne Prize I send you my
most cordial congratulations. I believe that the City of Aachen
could not possibly have chosen for this important prize any per¬
sonality more worthy and with greater merit among the pioneers
of the European idea. Indefatigably working for many years, you
have great historic merits in preparing for a union of the European
nations. You will certainly be most gratified that with the French
Government plan for a pooling of the German and French coal and
steel industries a new step has been reached on the road to European
federation. We Germans acclaim this French plan with all our hearts,
because it seems more than anything else capable of uniting the
French and German peoples to work together in the service of
peace.

My speech which followed dealt with Charlemagne as a
symbol of unity and of reconciliation between the great
nations that had been united under his sceptre; the Germans,
French and Italians. I said;

It was indeed a bold and imaginative step for your city, by
the institution of this prize, to cast a bridge across the eleven
centuries that lie between the grandiose tradition of the Empire of
the Franks and the greatest hope of our time: the United States of
Europe.

What an expanse of blood and tears that bridge must span! The
eleven-hundred-year-old war between France and Germany, which
was to destroy all that Gharlemagne created, began with the battle
of Fontenay as a fratricidal struggle between his heirs—and has
continued to rage as a fraticidal struggle throughout the centuries.

To our generation falls the task of breaking this chain of wars,
of putting an end for ever to this hereditary enmity. It is our task

VICTORY

307

completely to remake that disastrous Partition Treaty of Verdun,
which, since it was signed in the year 843, has torn the Empire of
Europe asunder into a French, a German and an Italian nation,
and to recreate the unity of Europe in the spirit of the twentieth
century.

The time has come to put an end to the state of war between
France and Germany, not by a peace treaty which could only lead
to fresh protests and revisionist movements but by a federal con¬
stitution that would establish the future relationship of France and
Germany on a foundation of laws and not of treaties. Within that
federation all such outstanding problems as those of the Ruhr and
the Saar could be amicably solved in the common interest.

The attitude of the United States and of the United Kingdom
will be of deckive importance to bring the Union Charlemagne
into being. I happen just to have returned from the United States
and can assure you that the Americans would be glad to have a
powerful ally on the European continent who would deliver them
from the fearful prospect of seeing the flower of their youth lay down
its life again and again on the battlefields of Europe.

And England? Was it not its traditional policy for centuries to
prevent the mainland of Europe uniting for fear that the united
continent might turn against Britain? Only with the signing of the
Atlantic Pact, by which America, England and the European main¬
land are merged in a single defence system, has that fear lost its
point. England has, on the contrary, everything to gain by having
on the opposite coast of Europe a strong ally capable of holding up
the advance of an enemy towards Calais, should the occasion arke.
The realization of the Union Charlemagne is hence just as much in
the interest of England as of America. The Atlantic Union would
thereby become a Triple Alliance with Britain as the bridge between
America and Europe.

The revival of the Carolingian Empire in the spirit of the twentieth
century would be a deckive step forward towards the unification of
Europe. A great new empire would thus come into being, with a
population greater than that of the United States of America and
whose territory, stretching from the Baltic to Katanga, would be
second only to the Soviet Union in vastness. With a huge domestic
market of two hundred million people and almost inexhaustible
reserves of raw materials, it could, within a few years, cause economic
prosperity to blossom forth as never before in Europe. Unassailable
from the military point of view, it could ensure for its member
peoples a long period of peace. For Eastern Europe it would act as a
lodestone, drawing first Eastern Germany and then the nations of
Eastern Europe into its orbit.

3 o8 an idea conq,uers the world

For this decisive step out of a tragic past into a brilliant future
to be possible, all that is required is determination and initiative on
the part of the leaders and people of France, Germany, Italy and
the Benelux countries. It depends on them whether Europe shall
founder amid the smoke-clouds of atom bombs—or whether,
Phoenix-like, it shall emerge out of the flames of the last world war
with renewed splendour.

At the end of the ceremony, my wife and I were invited to
sign our names in the Golden Book of the city of Aachen.

A few hours later a big crowd awaited me on the square
facing the Palace of the Emperors, around an old well crowned
with a statue of Charlemagne. From the terrace of the Palace
I addressed this meeting, speaking about the mission of
Europe’s young generation. This time I did not speak of
politics. On the contrary, I explained that even the most
perfect federation w<is unable to save Europe, if its young
generations did not live up to the great common ideals of our
past: Greek liberty, Christian charity and the heroic con¬
ception of medieval chivalry, transformed and integrated
into a modem way of life.

To endless cheers, Idcl and I descended the stairs to
reach our car. This was very difEcult indeed, for we were
immediately surrounded by a group of Dutch boy-scouts who
had crossed the border to attend the meeting. The crowd
that filled the large square did not move. With tears in their
eyes, men and women were waving their hands, hats, and
handkerchiefs; when our car passed, they lifted up their
children to see and greet us.

We were deeply impressed and moved by this spontaneous
demonstration of popular enthusiasm in this beautiful city
that has been transformed by the war into a heap of ruins.
It was evident that its people, who had suffered so much after
having been misled by false prophets, were now setting all
their hopes upon a United States of Europe which would at
last permit them to live their lives in peace and liberty.

After a gay banquet we left Aachen for Bonn, where I had
a most satisfactory talk with Adenauer.

VICTORY 309

From Bonn we drove slowly, across ruins and blossoms, to
our Swiss mountain home.

A few days later we received a beautiful volume bound in
black and gold leather. It contained a parchment with the
arms of Aachen, signed by all members of the jury of the
Charlemagne Prize.

Printed and pain^ted like a medieval document, in bold red,
gold and black lettering, it reads as follows:

On Ascension Day, i8th May 1950, the international Charlemagne
Prize of the City of Aachen for 1950 was conferred in the Coro¬
nation Hall of the Rathaus, the former Kaiser-Pfalz, upon Count
Richard Nicolaus Coudenhovc-Kalergi, Doctor of Philosophy, as an
award for his lifework for the establishment of a United States of
Europe.

The City of Aachen, at one time centre of the Carolingian Empire,
stretching from the Pyrenees to the limits of the Slav nations, as a
border-city ever active in its endeavours to bridge over these
borders by spiritual links, has found no one more worthy to be
awarded for the first time with this, her highest distinction.

Aachen, i8th May 1950.

One year after these happy days at Aachen, I was a widower.
The world around me seemed to collapse. My health and mood
were low and only the uninterrupted work for Pan-Europe,
which more than ever was nearing its goal, upheld me.

In this darkest period of my life, the miracle of a new love
brought sudden light and recovery. When on April 3rd, 1952,
I married Countess AlLx de Tiele-Bally at the Church of St.
Pierre de Chaillot in Paris, a new chapter of my life started.
But this is another story.

Meanwhile the creation of the Council of Europe was
followed by new and decisive initiatives. The Schuman plan
was the first step leading to a genuine federation of Charle¬
magne Europe. Followed by the plan for a European Army, it
will soon be crowned by the work of a Constituent Assembly,
such as the European Parliamentary Union has been urging
since 1948.

310 AN IDEA CONQ,UERS THE WORLD

Thus the Pan-European Movement is rapidly reaching its
final political goals. The Utopia of yesterday has at last become
a reality. But every success creates new tasks. To assure the
future of Europe, a constitutional framework is not enough.
What we need is a genuine spirit of continental patriotism.

To accomplish this new task, the Pan-European Movement^
has renewed its old activities in a new spirit.

As a mountaineer turns to look down the long and steep path
that lies below him before going down, so this book is the story
of the long way that led Pan-Europe from the dream to a book,
from a book to a movement, from a movement to a political
achievement.

It is the story of an idea, which captured the imagination
first of hundreds, then of thousands, then of millions—until
it became a reality; like a rivulet in the mountains swelling to
a river, to merge with the broad stream of human history.

‘The new headquarters of the Pan-European Movement is to rue Central,
Lausanne. Secretary General; Dr. Ernst Steffan.

$ 5.00

RUSSIA, POLAND
AND THE WEST
Waclaw Lednicki

Darkly advanced across the con¬
tours of modern Europe lies the
shadow of the Soviet Union, but
still faintly luminous within the
enveloping gloom rise the spiritual
bastions of a country long the
voluntary outpost of western faith
and culture, although linked by
race and language to her eastern
neighbor. Through Poland,
rendered by incessant conflict
more western than the West, and
particularly through her great
epic poet Adam Mickiewicz, Pro¬
fessor Lednicki interprets the
literary and cultural relationships
of the Russia of the Czars and of
the Europe beyond her borders
during the nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries, so throwing
valuable light on the development
of the situation today. Among the
topics which he examines with
characteristically brilliant scholar¬
ship and insight, and with a
wealth of independent research,
arc the influence of Peter
Chaadaev (a name hitherto little
known outside Russia) ; the
Decembrist rising of 1825 and the
attitude of Pushkin, Tyutchev,
and Mickiewicz ; the growth of
Dostoevsky’s antipathy to Poland
and the ideology of the West ; and
the provenance of Alexander
Blok’s poem “Retribution.”